"Walk To School Day" Hopes To Reduce Number Of Children Struck By Cars

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- In the US, 44 children are hit by cars every day, with 274 killed last year alone.

As Mike Schuh reports, a national effort to reduce those numbers centers around some ideas thought up by middle schoolers on the east side.

It seems like most of the students at Patterson Park Public Charter walk there.

A Walk to School Day safety video was created by Meki Hammond and Netre Clark, who also starred in the video. Hammond is in seventh grade; Clark is in eighth. Clark sang and wrote lyrics.

"We were inspired to make this video because we were in music class and the instructor told us about this contest," Clark said. "When we were thinking, I was just giving out a lot of ideas."

Their ideas were good---out of 50 videos sent in internationally, they won.

As winners, professionals came to school to produce a commercial---truly music to Clark's mom.

"His name is Netre, but I always say I should have named him `No-Trey' because it's always, `No, Trey, don't do this; no, Trey, don't do that,'" his mom said. "[This] makes me feel good."

"We actually did something to help," Clark said.

This celebration of the winning video was one of 600 walk to school events taking place around the world Wednesday.