House committee hears multiple county bills to authorize crosswalk monitoring cameras to curb failures-to-yield

Delegate Ashanti Martinez presented HB 1227 on behalf of the Prince George’s County delegation, asking the Environment and Transportation Committee to authorize county use of crosswalk monitoring systems in school zones to reduce failures to yield and protect students.

"This bill would give Prince George’s County the ability to place crosswalk monitoring devices within school zones," said Delegate Ashanti Martinez. She referenced the November 2023 deaths of two students near Riverdale Elementary as part of the bill’s urgency and said the bill includes community oversight, signage, and a modest civil penalty structure.

Witnesses from vendors and safety groups said pilot data support the technology. Wade Borman of Avio Inc. summarized pilot results and described systems that detect pedestrian presence and vehicle movement: "In Prince George’s County, over 1,000 failure-to-yield events were seen per day in our pilots," he said, and reported failure rates approaching 88 percent in some tests. John Tsang of Safe Roads Maryland said the systems are designed to be measured, civil tools that do not carry insurance or license-point penalties.

Supporters emphasized privacy protections and limited access to images. Martinez and other sponsors said amendments clarify that recorded images are not publicly available but may be accessed by a cited person, their counsel, or authorized government personnel; the judiciary supplied a fiscal note and asked for modernization clarifications for court handling of contested citations.

Committee members asked technical and fiscal questions about who would collect fines, how revenues would be used, and whether the state judiciary’s IT modernization assumptions were required by the statute. Sponsors said fines would be directed to the State Highway Administration to fund safety improvements and that the judiciary’s cited IT costs reflect modernization choices rather than statutory requirements.

Several county-specific bills with similar language were heard the same day — HB 9 38 for Anne Arundel/Annapolis and HB 10 86 for Montgomery County — each including local reporting requirements and privacy language. Montgomery’s proposal was described as a pilot limited to 30 crosswalk sites with required local reporting and provisions to return unallocated fine revenue to crosswalk improvements.

Supporters included county Vision Zero coordinators, school nurses, local safety committees and residents who recounted near misses and fatalities, and vendors who ran pilot data demonstrating high rates of drivers failing to yield. Opponents were limited in number and generally sought technical amendments on signage, judicial procedures, or limited exemptions. Several delegates said they would work to harmonize language across county bills before the committee’s evening vote.

The committee recessed and will return at 6:00 p.m. for consideration of consolidated amendments and votes.