Motor Vehicle Accidents

October 23, 2025

Maryland Car Accidents Update 2025

Fall is here, and summer vacations are already a fading memory. Maryland residents are back to their full-on schedules of work, school, appointments, and errands — as everything seems busier with the November and December holidays looming.

Fall also means our Maryland highways, city streets, and suburban roadways are once again jammed with commuters traveling to and from work. Anyone who has commuted in the greater Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area can attest to the maddening congestion, with one study citing Maryland as having the most congested roadways in the country (see link below).

With fall driving now a major part of our daily lives, let’s take a look at recent motor vehicle accident statistics in Maryland. According to Zero Deaths Maryland …

August 25, 2025

Maryland Back to School 2025 : School Bus and Other Traffic Safety Laws

by Jeff Butschky

Whether you’re young or old, summer sure seems to fly by faster and faster every year. By mid-August, Maryland parents and kids are scrambling to squeeze in as much remaining summer fun as they can, while getting ready for the 2025-2026 school year about to begin.

Back to school is a good time to review the Maryland traffic laws designed to keep our school children safe and avoid pedestrian and motor vehicle accidents. Let’s start with the army of school buses about to descend on our streets.

February 6, 2025

Maryland Top Causes of Winter Car Accidents

by Jeff Butschky

First snow of the season brings not only joy for the kids and a pretty winter picture outside – but Maryland drivers who must navigate through snow, ice, and sleet on the roadways. This isn’t just true for us but for other Mid-Atlantic and Northeast region states where snow is an annual occurrence, yet some drivers still seem unprepared. Worse are those who don’t alter their driving behaviors to accommodate for the slippery conditions and low visibility that snowstorms bring.

Most every Maryland snowstorm of significance brings with it not only fender benders, but the potential for serious car accidents with injuries or worse due to motorists encountering hazardous driving conditions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that in 2022, there were 498 fatal traffic crashes and an estimated 32,213 injury crashes in the U.S. that occurred when snow/sleet conditions were present at the time of the crash.

Top causes of winter motor vehicle accidents in Maryland and other snowy states include …
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December 27, 2024

Maryland Road Worker Protection Act Updates Roll Out for 2025

by Jeff Butschky

We’ve all driven past road crews on the sides of our Maryland highways — where construction, repairs, and other road work happens seemingly within feet of speeding motor vehicles. It takes a special kind of man or woman to do this hard manual labor for hours, in hot and cold weather, amid the noise and rush of oncoming traffic.

Tragically, on March 22, 2023, six road workers died when a car going more than 100 mph crashed into a work zone on I-695 in Baltimore County. This preventable fatal car accident resulted in multiple felony negligent manslaughter charges for the two drivers involved, and the call for legislation to better protect construction workers on our Maryland streets and highways.

The Assistant Governor’s office formed a work zone safety group in the wake of the fatal crash, leading to the Maryland Road Worker Protection Act being signed into law in April 2024. In January 2025, a tiered penalty system goes into effect for drivers who speed in work zones.

June 21, 2024

Maryland Drivers Beware: The “100 Deadliest Days of Summer” Have Begun

by Jeff Butschky

School’s out! And that means more teenaged and inexperienced drivers on our Maryland highways, city and suburban streets, and rural backroads. Public safety officials describe the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day as “the 100 deadliest days of summer” – due to the historical increase in motor vehicle accidents involving younger, inexperienced drivers.

Traffic crashes remain the number-one cause of death among teenagers. Let’s take a look at some of the statistics and factors contributing to this serious public safety problem.

January 25, 2024

Maryland Car Crash Fatalities on Track to Surpass 600 Deaths in 2023

by Jeff Butschky

The Maryland Department of Transportation reports the number of motor vehicle accident fatalities on our state’s highways and roadways continues to grow. According to Zero Deaths Maryland, a public safety program of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), car crash deaths are expected to surpass 600 fatalities for 2023 — the highest number of roadway fatalities in decades.

Zero Deaths Maryland reports that most Maryland car crash deaths are caused by the following driving behaviors:
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January 26, 2023

Why is Maryland seeing more traffic accidents during the COVID-19 pandemic?

by Jeff Butschky

Last year, our Maryland personal injury law practice saw an increase in motor vehicle accident cases. This is in spite of people still working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we’d expect fewer motorists crowding highways commuting to and from their workplaces.

Zero Deaths Maryland reported 544 motor vehicle crash fatalities for 2022, including 339 drivers, 64 passengers, 128 pedestrians, 11 bike or pedacyclists, and 2 unknown. This figure is down from 563 traffic accident deaths in Maryland in 2021. However, in 2020, more people died in automobile crashes here (573 deaths) than in previous years, resulting in an overall 7.1-percent increase in traffic accident fatalities for Maryland.

Nationally, motor vehicle accident fatalities since the start of the pandemic have increased to levels not seen in many years, reversing a positive trend toward fewer deaths on our roadways. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 42,915 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2021 — a 10.5% increase from the 38,824 fatalities in 2020 and the highest number of U.S. motor vehicle accident deaths since 2005.

So what is going on here? Traffic safety experts aren’t entirely sure.

November 11, 2022

Maryland Move Over Law Expands to Protect All Vehicles on the Roadside

by Jeff Butschky

Graphic: Maryland Department of Transportation, Maryland State Police

Beginning October 1, 2022, the Maryland Move Over Law expanded to include all vehicles pulled over on the side of the road with hazards on and/or road flares displayed. In doing so, Maryland becomes the eighth state in the nation to expands its move over traffic law to cover all types of vehicles — not only emergency responders, law enforcement and tow trucks.

The original Maryland Move Over Law went into effect in 2010 as a way to protect police officers on the roadside from deadly traffic accidents. The original law established a buffer between moving traffic and those broken down or pulled over on the roadside by requiring oncoming vehicles to slow down and move over from the right lane into middle or left lanes, if safe to do so. In the following years, the law expanded to include other types of vehicles….

January 31, 2022

Maryland Courts System – COVID-19 Updates for January 2022

by Jeff Butschky

I think we’d all agree that 2021 was a very challenging year for many individuals and families. The team at Butschky & Butschky worked hard to provide the personal injury law services our clients expect and deserve — despite the many challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, motor vehicle accident fatality rates have increased in Maryland and across the U.S. Our work to advocate for accident injury victims does not take a break, despite the coronavirus.

Over the past two years, we’ve kept pace with the often changing public health guidelines and restrictions put in place by the Maryland Courts in an effort to keep everyone safe. Some courthouses were open, while others remains closed. We’ve dealt with backed-up caseloads in the courts, slow mail services, and even slower insurance claims processing. And while the courts resumed some normal operations, including criminal and civil jury trials, in April 2021, they’ve now stepped that back again due to the highly contagious Omicron variant.

Here are some of the recent changes to operations posted by the Maryland Courts for January 2022:

September 23, 2021

Auto Accident Deaths Rise During COVID-19 Pandemic, Despite People Driving Less

by Jeff Butschky

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that despite people driving less during the COVID-19 pandemic, motor vehicle accident fatalities have actually increased.

NHTSA estimates for 2020 show that 38,680 people died in U.S. motor vehicle traffic crashes — the largest projected number of fatalities since 2007. This figure represents an increase of about 7.2 percent over the 36,096 crash fatalities reported in 2019.

This rise in traffic accident deaths is in contrast to the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) report that overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2020 decreased by about 13.2 percent, compared to miles traveled in 2019. The decrease in driving during the 2020 coronavirus crisis can be attributed to a number of factors, including…