Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett rolled out another effort to curb the number of pedestrian deaths Monday with a series of public service announcements and videos that include emotional testimonies from mothers who lost children to car accidents.
The 30-second commercials — which will air on the county cable channel — and longer videos — which will be available in high schools and adult learning centers — are part of an ongoing effort by Leggett to reduce the number of collisions between cars and pedestrians in the county.
The videos cost $25,000 to make; the county has allocated $5 million during the current fiscal year for Leggett’s pedestrian safety initiatives, with much of it being paid for by speed camera revenue.
Though the county is in the middle of a severe budget shortage and is weighing additional job cuts and implementing furloughs, officials said the county has made making its roads safe a top priority.
“This is a question of lives,” said Leggett’s spokesman, Patrick Lacefield.
There have been five pedestrian fatalities in Montgomery County this year, with 19 in 2008. The county has averaged more than 400 collisions a year between vehicles and pedestrians in the last four years. But Leggett said numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“This is not something that is abstract,” said Leggett, who added that last year he saw the body of a pedestrian who had been killed in a car accident when he was on his way to a news conference about pedestrian safety.
“This is something that I take personally,” he added.
The bilingual series, called “Drive Safe,” is aimed at teen and new adult drivers, including non-native English speakers, and comes a year after the county produced another pedestrian safety series called “Walk Safe.” Officials said they are working on another effort geared at promoting pedestrian safety in parking lots.
Leggett acknowledged that the videos alone won’t reduce the number of pedestrian accidents but said education was a complement to the county’s other efforts, such as increased enforcement of speed limits through the use of speed cameras and engineering efforts that include the use of speed bumps and reflectors.
Joining Leggett at a news conference was Yaffa Klugerman, a Silver Spring mother whose 14-year-old son, Dov, was killed by a speeding car in front of their house three years ago. Klugerman’s testimony appears in the drive-safe videos.
“It’s a pain that never completely goes away,” she said, adding that she participated in the video with hopes that her story will encourage more careful driving.
LOOK BOTH WAYS
Areas in which money is spent in pedestrian safety initiatives in fiscal 2010:
» Expanded sidewalk construction: $120,000
» New street lights: $758,280
» Reassess pedestrian signal timing: $237,250
