Members of Walk San Francisco assembled Thursday evening at the intersection of Mission and Cortland to create a memorial of sunflowers and paper hearts for the 10 pedestrians killed in San Francisco so far this year. They chose the intersection because 41-year-old Miguel Angel Barrera-Cruz died here in a hit-and-run in the predawn hours of Monday morning.
“It’s 10 too many,” Walk SF director Jodie Medeiros said. “This is not okay. Our city is better than this.”
Mission Street, where Monday’s hit-and-run took place, is in the city’s “high-injury network,” where severe car crashes tend to happen. “The number of cars that are going so fast” is striking, Medeiros said, observing the street’s traffic.
“It’s important for the city to start to look at making sure that drivers understand that this is a neighborhood, and these are neighborhood streets, these are businesses, and people live here, people are getting on the bus, and kids are going to school,” Meideiros said.
Soon after the memorial was set up, Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents District 9, where the hit-and-run took place, came to pay her respects, bringing along her daughter.
“I’m just so sad at another traffic-caused death in the district at such an important area, a bus stop that so many people use in the district. It just hits home,” Ronen said.
To address these pedestrian deaths, Ronen said that she and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan are cosponsoring legislation that would “streamline the process for Vision Zero,” eliminating city bureaucracy so that projects can move faster.
Vision Zero, which started in 2014, is the San Francisco government’s goal to eliminate all traffic fatalities. Experts have criticized the city’s plan as uncoordinated and reactive.
Ronen also lauded the 33 speed cameras that will be installed in San Francisco in 2025 along the high-injury network. The cameras, which are part of a state pilot program, will take pictures of cars that drive 11 or more miles per hour over the speed limit.
“A long time ago, I used to be against them, because I didn’t like the privacy concerns,” Ronen said. “After seeing so many tragic deaths, I am all for them. Whatever we can do to keep people safe and slow cars down, we need to be doing.”
The nine other pedestrian victims this year include three unidentified adults; David Bridges Jr., 31; Michael Lukehart, 41; and a family of four, Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40 and his wife, Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, 38, and their children Joaquin, 2, and Cauê, 3 months.
This story was updated with the identity of the victim in Monday’s crash. Additional reporting by Eleni Balakrishnan.
