Deadly Accokeek crash on Indian Head Highway kills man, closes road

A deadly crash on Indian Head Highway shut down one of Prince George’s County’s busiest south county corridors Friday morning after a school bus and two other vehicles collided near Pine Drive in Accokeek, killing one man at the scene.

Officers responded around 7:20 a.m. on May 8 to the crash on Maryland Route 210, where the school bus driver was taken to the hospital and a third driver was treated at the scene. No children were on the bus when it was struck, a detail that eased one immediate fear even as investigators worked the wreckage and traffic backed up in both directions.

Investigators were examining how the bus became involved and whether speed played a role. Reports from the scene said the bus was crossing Indian Head Highway when it was hit broadside by a northbound Mercedes, and skid marks suggested the car may have braked before impact. The force of the collision was severe enough to kill the Mercedes driver before he could be taken from the scene.

Prince George’s County Public Schools said the district was shaken by the crash and would work with police. “We are devastated by the tragic crash involving one of our school buses this morning, which resulted in a fatality,” a school system spokesperson said. The district also said there were no children on board and that it would cooperate with law enforcement and conduct its own investigation.

The crash revived long-running concerns about Indian Head Highway, a nearly 22-mile corridor that runs from the Washington, D.C., line to Indian Head in Charles County. A Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration report from December 2023 said there had been 39 fatal crashes on MD 210 in the previous 10 years between the Charles County line and I-95/I-495. The agency said it had already installed flex posts, advanced hazard beacons and rebuilt traffic signals along the corridor as part of safety improvements.

Prince George’s County Vision Zero uses state crash data to identify high-injury corridors and reduce serious crashes, and Indian Head Highway has remained one of the county’s most scrutinized roads. Safety advocates, including Rev. Dr. Robert L. Screen, founder of the MD 210 Traffic Safety Committee, have pointed to a history of deadly wrecks near the same stretch, including eight deaths in a 2008 drag-racing crash. One report cited 12 deaths near the location over the years.

The numbers underscore how much road safety still shapes daily life in Prince George’s County. One report said the county recorded 93 traffic deaths in 2025, compared with 43 in Montgomery County, a gap that puts added pressure on officials to make dangerous corridors like Indian Head Highway safer before the next collision turns fatal.