Mountain Road in Baltimore, also known as Route 177, saw yet another crash this month.  A car driven by a Pasadena teenager, Kala Marie Austin, aged 17, crashed into a house in what is suspected to have been an accident caused by the combined forces of speed and wet roads.  Fortunately, the house was vacant: Austin was less fortunate, however, for she perished in the accident.  The crash left shards of the blue auto glass embedded in the house’s siding, there for people to take as a warning: this is not the first death from a car accident on this road and it shall very likely not be the last, given the area’s history.

In a list of incidents compiled by the Baltimore Sun and spanning the years 1993 to the present, at least 20 persons were shown to have been in fatal crashes on the Mountain Road.  Only this year, there have already been three distinct accidents with two—Kala Marie Austin’s included—leading to deaths.

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The most striking feature of the compiled list has to do with the usual causes of the accident.  A good number of them involved vehicles crashing into fixed objects very near the roads, such as trees or even buildings, as in the case of the building where Austin’s car crashed and sprayed its auto glass.  This relates to the big problem with the Mountain Road’s design, which is not just filled with sharp and tricky corners but also characterised by its narrowness.  The road has been described as barely more than a backwoods or small town path by locals.

The problem is compounded by the swift population increase the locality has been experiencing.  The area is home to several rather densely populated suburban locations that are still growing, further choking up the small throat making up the Mountain Road.  This might explain why another common occurrence in the list of fatal crashes for the area featured people (locals, to be precise) being run over by vehicles going off the road.

There is also a high incidence of alcohol-related crashes on the road.  This happens on many other roads, of course, but the complexity of navigating a road raises the chances of such accidents, which makes Mountain Road especially precarious for drivers under the influence.  Officials estimate that there must be several hundred shards and pieces of auto glass already littered all over the sides of the road by now, given the sheer volume of accidents that happen on it.

For now, however, the most significant auto glass leftovers are the ones Austin’s car left on the Mountain Road house.  Austin’s mother and concerned citizens have already begun to talk about having the concerned building removed for safety and are also mounting a campaign for the promotion of safety on Route 177.

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