Street safety advocates warn drivers to stay alert as the days get darker earlier

Street safety advocates are warning drivers to be on alert as the days get darker earlier.  

This comes after a teenager was hit by a car on Stringfellow Road outside of Chantilly High School on Wednesday.

The teen, who was not identified, was taken to the hospital in critical condition. 

Pedestrians noticed attempts to make the road safer, but there is still concern. 

“They’ve had the little flags on the corner, I think that helps out as well and the fact that there’s a camera further up ahead with the speed, I think it helps out a lot, but it is worrisome because you just don’t know how drivers are out here,” one resident said. 

”In 2025 we had 300 fatalities, nearly a third of those were pedestrians. We can and we have to do better,” Clark Mercer, the Executive Director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, said. 

The warnings were echoed across the DMV area. In Silver Spring, street smart officials and others plead with drivers to slow down. 

”As the campaign says, slow the ‘f’ down. I appreciate the boldness of somebody being willing to use that slogan. Driving above the speed limit barely reduces your time of travel,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said. 

Members of the organization Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets called on Fairfax County, Alexandria and VDOT to conduct field reviews of Route 7 in the Bailey’s Crossroads area, where they said the darker hours led to many crashes with pedestrians and cyclists. 

The group is advocating for more lighting and better crossings.

Police across the region will conduct extra enforcement in high pedestrian areas as part of the Street Smart campaign.