A 31-year-old Hyattsville woman was killed in March when the car she was riding in collided with another vehicle at the Adelphi Road and Riggs Road intersection, fewer than two miles from the University of Maryland.
But the road death of Berta Lisethe Marroquín Colindres was nothing unusual for Prince George’s County.
Prince George’s has the highest number of road fatalities of any Maryland county so far this year and in recent years.
As of Thursday, there had been 34 traffic fatalities this year in Prince George’s County. Baltimore County, which has the next highest total, reported 12. And Montgomery County, which has a population a tenth larger than Prince George’s, reported only 10 crash fatalities this year.
The number of fatal crashes in Prince George’s County rose nearly every year between 2019 to 2023, the Maryland Department of Transportation crash summary reported.
“It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why our county sees these numbers,” the Prince George’s County Police Department said in a statement. “In part we believe the reason is a dense population and a lot of major thoroughfares.”
Most fatal crashes involve excessive speeding, impaired driving or unfastened seat belts, the police spokesperson said.
John Seng, chair of SafeRoadsMD, a nonprofit which focuses on advocating for safer roads for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists, said the county has long been an outlier in terms of traffic safety.
“This is not a new phenomenon in Prince George’s County,” he said. “It’s always been the poster child of this ignominious leadership in road crashes for the past 10 years.”
Prince George’s County had its fewest traffic fatalities in recent years with 91 in 2024, but it still led Maryland counties. Baltimore County was the next highest county with 74 fatal crashes.
And if the current pace continues, Prince George’s will report about 92 traffic fatalities this year.
There are many single-parent households in Prince George’s County, Seng said, which may impact how much time is spent advising children on proper road safety. He added police staffing is down in Maryland and Prince George’s County, meaning fewer police officers are on the road enforcing safe driving.
Prince George’s County Police identified busy roadways, such as Route 202, Route 214, Annapolis Road, Laurel Bowie Road, Pennsylvania Avenue, St. Barnabas Road and Indian Head Highway (Route 210), as the most common fatal crash sites in the county.
Natasha Pettigrew was riding her bicycle and training for a triathlon when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on Route 202 in 2010. Her mother, Kenniss Henry, said elected representatives don’t take road safety seriously enough. She keeps pressing the county to install more bike lanes, to little avail.
“The issue keeps coming back to funding, ‘We can’t afford it. There’s no funding,’” she said.
But Herbert Jones, of the Route 210 Traffic Safety Committee, said elected officials have stepped up to try to improve traffic safety.
He noted the new speed cameras on Route 210 have superior detection capabilities than the previous cameras.
“The county changed out their speed camera vendor at our suggestion,” Jones said. “So far, it’s worked very well. People are definitely changing their behavior.”
Henry said although Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in 2011 strengthened the punishment for criminally negligent homicide, raising the punishment to three years in jail, elected officials have been slow to pass meaningful legislation to deter dangerous driving.
“When my daughter was killed, I went to Annapolis, not knowing that others had been going back and forth,” Henry said. “I think they had been lobbying for a change in the vehicle manslaughter laws for five years across the state. That just shows you the level of non-commitment to highway fatalities.”
Christy Littleford, the driver who was convicted of leaving the scene of Pettigrew’s fatal hit-and-run, was sentenced to a year in prison.
Montgomery County Councilmember-at-Large Evan Glass pressed for the passage of the county’s Safe Streets Act of 2023, which prohibits right turns on red lights in downtown areas, allows increased time for pedestrians to cross at crosswalks and more. He said managing roads between county and state authorities is complex.
“I passed this law in 2023, and there are aspects of it that are still being enacted,” Glass said. “Here in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County, some roads are managed by the county and some roads are managed by the state of Maryland, so it makes it complicated.”
For Seng, implementing tougher punishments for vehicular manslaughter would be a big help in boosting traffic safety.
“If someone’s texting and driving and kills someone, why is that a less serious crime than [non-premeditated] homicide?” Seng asked. “That is not outside the category of violent crime.”
Ron Weiss, of the Route 210 Traffic Safety Committee, said the county’s handling of fatal crashes doesn’t mitigate further accidents and reckless driving.
“People in Prince George’s County and maybe even Maryland, in general, are treated a lot less severe [than in other states],” Weiss said.
Seng said the inadequate punishment for negligent driving “comes to a head” in Prince George’s County, leading to fatal crashes.
“In Prince George’s County, people woke up in the morning … who didn’t see the end of the day,” Seng said. “Somebody with extremely poor driving hygiene had other plans.”
Colindres, who was the passenger who died in the fatal March crash, was studying to be a nurse, according to a GoFundMe post. The crowdfunding post is raising money to fly Colindres’ body back to her family home in Guatemala.
“Berta was a caring and compassionate soul who dedicated her life to helping others,” the GoFundMe post says. “She was only 31 years old and had a beautiful dream of becoming a nurse. In fact, Berta was supposed to graduate this month, a milestone she worked so hard to achieve.”
There have been 14 fatal crashes in Prince George’s County since Colindres’ death.