Reply to 3 killed in crash on River Road

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[quote=Anonymous]Posted on Facebook but the Bannockburn Civic Association:

The deaths of three people at the River/Pyle intersection is actually a scandal.  The local community in the vicinity of Whitman High School has long been highly aware of how dangerous this unregulated intersection (known locally as the Braeburn intersection) is.  In 2008, the community petitioned the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) to install a traffic light to improve traffic regulation.  The petition was maintained online, and in short order, 528 local residents had signed it. The effort had the support of Whitman Principal Goodwin and local politicians among others.

The 2008-09 effort was simply the latest in periodic community efforts every five years or so prior to then to press the state to install a light.  The Braeburn intersection serves as a back entrance to the Whitman High School parking lot, and is used in the morning and evening by generally students (often very new drivers) heading eastbound on River Road, who then turn left toward Whitman, crossing on coming traffic on River that is often proceeding over the speed limit up and over the crest of a hill unaware of cross traffic.   There have been a number of accidents, including injuries, at the intersection over the years.  It has been for decades a deadly accident waiting to happen.  Now it has.

In a Channel 7 (WJLA) story from the site, the SHA spokesperson at the time said, "We can not and do not make decisions based 
on petitions or emotion."  (The story aired about May 20, 2008, but is no longer on WJLA's web site apparently).  The First Amendment, of course, guarantees us the right to petition our government, but SHA arrogantly brags about ignoring our petitions.  SHA, in effect, declared itself to be unaccountable to the people.

Then, throughout 2008 and 2009, the community tried to obtain copies of SHA's traffic studies at the intersection, without success for an extended time as SHA stonewalled, contending that its studies were exempt from the Maryland Public Information Act.  We actually litigated through Maryland's administrative-law process to press for release of these studies so we could assess for ourselves the basis on which SHA was failing to act.  A file of documents detailing that litigation is linked here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3ssLhDvmtXPQmJKcWFMdzN5N0E&usp=sharing

In this file, document 3.3 is an index to the other documents.

Eventually, after denying us the studies, SHA relented through an act of what it described as "discretion".  When we analyzed the studies, we matched the count of accidents at the intersection with those reported in publicly available Montgomery County accident reports, and found several were missing in SHA's count (on which it partially based its conclusion that a traffic light was unecessary).  Our analysis is reported in document 3.2 in the file linked in the prior paragraph.

This scandal is the back story to yesterday's tragedy.

Richard Boltuck
    Vice President, Bannockburn Civic Association[/quote]

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