Pedestrians involved in traffic crashes, Baltimore City represents 32% !!!

Pedestrian On Foot Involved
County 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 AVG. %
Allegany 15 4 6 7 8 8 0.3
Anne Arundel 206 219 220 218 217 216 7.5
Baltimore 420 423 432 425 400 420 14.6
Calvert 30 18 14 13 12 17 0.6
Caroline 5 5 4 10 3 5 0.2
Carroll 45 22 36 22 34 32 1.1
Cecil 18 19 27 26 46 27 0.9
Charles 47 36 42 28 28 36 1.3
Dorchester 12 15 5 11 14 11 0.4
Frederick 37 40 29 31 47 37 1.3
Garrett 5 8 6 2 5 5 0.2
Harford 54 59 45 62 36 51 1.8
Howard 38 62 54 60 53 53 1.9
Kent 3 3 3 1 5 3 0.1
Montgomery 430 421 405 436 405 419 14.6
Prince George's 487 430 449 427 408 440 15.3
Queen Anne's 5 10 7 10 6 8 0.3
St. Mary's 21 18 21 23 23 21 0.7
Somerset 1 4 7 2 2 3 0.1
Talbot 10 14 15 10 8 11 0.4
Washington 55 58 50 47 34 49 1.7
Wicomico 34 50 44 33 41 40 1.4
Worcester 43 50 34 45 39 42 1.5
Baltimore City 934 972 973 874 832 917 31.9
Total Crashes 2,955 2,960 2,928 2,823 2,706 2,874 100.0
http://stko.maryland.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=EZjH-UCsMFo%3d&tabid=190&mid=987
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by B' Spokes

Like most people I live a hectic life and who has the time for much exercise? Thanks to xtracycle now I do. By using my bike for daily activities I can get things done and get an hour plus work out in 15 minutes extra of my time, not a bad deal and beats taking the extra time going to the gym. In case you are still having trouble being motivated; the National Center of Disease Control says that inactivity is the #2 killer in the United States just behind smoking. ( http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/bb_nutrition/ ) Get out there and start living life! I can carry home a full shopping cart of groceries, car pool two kids or just get lost in the great outdoors camping for a week. Well I got go, another outing this weekend.
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While Baltimore appears to represent a disproportionately high share of the pedestrian-involved crashes, it's also the only one of the entities in the list which is entirely urban. If you scale the fatalities against population, Baltimore only has ~17% of the total. Why do Somerset and Caroline have almost no pedestrian crashes? Because they have no pedestrians! Population density obviously makes a difference. If you scale the fatality against population density per square mile, Baltimore drops to the middle of the pack, and Baltimore and Worcester Counties are at the top. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a statistically legitimate calculation to make, but my point is that it's misleading to say "Baltimore is responsible for a third of all pedestrian fatalities in MD" without considering that Baltimore also contains an enormous share of all pedestrian trips in the state.

That being said, of course we need to work to reduce pedestrian-involved crashes and fatalities in Baltimore and everywhere else, and drivers who run red lights are a huge issue here. I just don't like seeing that data presented without any context.

My calculations referenced above are based on 2009 estimate at http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/mdglance.html. I would post them and link but it was done pretty down-and-dirty on a laptop that isn't mine so it's just not in a presentable format. If anyone wants to see them I can make them available at a later time.
Looking at 2006 population numbers (just because I have them handy) Baltimore City has 11% of the State's population with 32% of the ped crashes, that's very disproportionate. Montgomery: 17% of population and 15% of ped crashes. Prince George's: 15% of population and 15% of ped crashes. Baltimore County: 14% of the population and 15% of the ped crashes. If totally urban is valid we should also see some significant over representation in mostly urban counties, which we don't. In fact Montgomery County where they do pedestrian crosswalk stings we see a slight reduction and in Baltimore County where they ticket j-walkers a slight increase. My personal thought is traffic enforcement in the city is a joke, 10 officers are assigned traffic duty, 5 during the day and 5 at night and that's it.