In a five-year period, there were more than 6,400 crashes in parking lots in Montgomery County, Maryland. Those crashes resulted in 57 serious injuries and deaths, according to the county’s planning department.
In that same time period from 2015 to 2020, 540 crashes involving pedestrians in parking lots accounted for 20% of all pedestrian crashes across the county.
Darcy Buckley, a transportation planner with the county’s planning department, told WTOP in an interview, “We looked at this data and it was very clear there was a problem here — that people are being hurt and injured in our parking lots.”
With that data in hand, Buckley said the next step is coming up with ways to make parking lots safer.
Now, the department has announced it’s received a $120,000 federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop new design standards that could achieve that goal of greater safety.
Buckley said the idea is to come up with a set of design standards that would be used as guidance for planning in Montgomery County. The guidelines could be used in future projects and in retrofitting current parking lots.
Part of the study will include looking at sight lines.
“When you’re walking across a parking lot and you can’t tell if drivers can see you, and it can be scary, especially if you have a mobility issue or if you have children with you,” Buckley said.
And for drivers, being able to pull in or out of a space can be a fraught experience.
“We’ll be looking at layouts … to see what kind of data and what kind of studies are out there about the safest type of parking, whether it’s backing in or parking head-in” for example, Buckley told WTOP.
Part of Montgomery County’s Vision Zero goal is to eliminate traffic fatalities — including those in parking lots — by 2030.
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