Maryland officials have reported that 563 people were killed on the state’s roads in 2022. That is the same number of accident fatalities reported in 2021. Pedestrian fatalities increased slightly in 2022, but cyclist deaths more than doubled. According to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, traffic accidents in 2022 killed 346 drivers, 65 passengers, 135 pedestrians and 11 cyclists.
Online data dashboard
The MVA’s Highway Safety office has introduced an online data dashboard to provide more information about the causes of accidents to help state and city officials make more informed road safety decisions. The dashboard allows accident information to be sorted by county, the age of the drivers involved and contributing factors like intoxication, excessive speed and distraction. State officials say the dashboard was viewed about 27,000 times in its first few days of operation.
Interstate 95 corridor
The online data dashboard includes a heat map that shows accident hotspots, and it reveals that most deadly car accidents in Maryland take place near Interstate 95. The most dangerous parts of Maryland for motorists in 2022 were Prince George’s County with 99 road deaths, Baltimore County with 63 accident fatalities and Montgomery County with 44 traffic deaths. Most of these deadly accidents were concentrated in an area running from southern Prince George’s County to northeast Baltimore County.
More effective policing
The worrying rise in road deaths observed around the country in recent years has been blamed on reckless behavior like speeding, driving drunk and using mobile devices behind the wheel. Maryland’s new accident information dashboard could make the roads safer by showing police departments in the Old Line State where this kind of behavior is most prevalent. If drunk drivers are arrested and speeding or distracted motorists are ticketed, accident fatalities may begin to fall.