Now that, mercifully, Baltimore’s homicide rate is much improved (Baltimore’s homicide rate dropped to a historic low last month, defied racial trends, May 1, 2025), can we talk about the other great scourge in public safety: driving.

It’s as if people got accustomed to traveling at twice the speed limit and blowing through red lights during COVID, and they’re never going back, despite traffic returning to its pre-pandemic levels. It affects every neighborhood in our city. Our insurance rates are 50% higher than, say, Howard County (Baltimore has the highest car insurance rates in Maryland. Here’s what you can do about it, Nov. 14, 2023) which I believe faithfully reflects the fact that we drive half as safely.

Every week my wife and I swap near death experience stories, horrific accidents we saw by the side of the road, or delays in our journeys due to accidents. There are two 16-year-old children in our household and we are reluctant to permit either one of them to learn how to drive.

I have a friend from out of state. In the fall, he was taking his daughter on a tour of colleges. They were on Pratt Street, headed to Loyola University Maryland and Notre Dame of Maryland University, when his daughter said to him, “You can turn around dad, I can’t live in a place where people drive like this.” When he told me this, I had no counterargument — she has a point.

I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never seen a traffic cop pulling someone over for running a red light or doing three times the speed limit in a school zone. As best I can tell, the last car pulled over probably ran on leaded petrol.

While speed and red light cameras are better than nothing, visible and mobile traffic enforcement would be much more effective. Sure, there may be problems in implementing so as to avoid racial disparities and not making people unemployable for driving offenses, but for Lord’s sake, do something. Public safety and our insurance rates will thank us.

Gary Proctor, Baltimore

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