As San Francisco hits the 10-year anniversary of its 2014 “Vision Zero” plan to eliminate all traffic fatalities this year, the effort has clearly failed: Nearly as many people are dying on city streets as ever.
Over the past decade, 299 people have been killed on city streets. In 2022, deaths totaled 39 — more than in any year since 2007.
But it’s not Vision Zero itself — a basic principle, borrowed from Sweden, that people should not be killed or injured on roadways — that has failed, according to experts in urban planning, public health, and road safety. Instead, the failure has been San Francisco’s piecemeal, reactive approach to fixing the problem, which has allowed pedestrians and drivers alike to continue being injured and killed on city streets.
Reducing traffic collisions, injuries and fatalities requires attacking road safety from all angles: Officials willing to expend political capital, police officers and others willing to enforce against bad drivers, and proper data analysis that can guide the city’s action to address road safety effectively. Experts say none of these have happened.
“It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we love walking and biking, we love walkable cities,’ and yet we don’t wanna change anything,” said Leah Shahum, director of the Vision Zero Network, and the head of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition from 2002 to 2014. The city started down the road to Vision Zero, Shahum said, but has not made the tough decisions required to make it work.
The city’s failure became tragically clear on March 16, when a family of four was killed by a 78-year-old driver as the family waited at a bus stop in West Portal. Matilde Ramos Pinto and Diego Cardoso de Oliveira were killed, along with their 1-year-old and 2-month-old children. It remains unclear why the 78-year-old woman behind the wheel crossed over the roadway and slammed into the family. She is cooperating with investigators, who have not yet pressed charges.
“When there is a terrible tragedy like this one, you see everybody up in arms, and you see attention go to the problem,” Shahum said. “But then their leadership kind of falls back into this complacency, and we kind of take our eyes off the ball.”
That is not the case in other cities, several experts pointed out. Around the world and across the country, cities have made concerted efforts to redesign their streets and reduce deaths — and have succeeded.
San Francisco traffic fatalities from 2005 to 2024
Vision Zero SF
was adopted as
a policy in 2014
40
30
The West Portal crash
brought this year’s
total fatalities up to 11
20
10
0
2020
2024
2008
2009
2006
2005
2022
2023
2007
2010
2014
2021
2012
2018
2019
2013
2016
2015
2017
2011
20
0
10
40
30
‘05
‘06
‘07
‘08
‘09
Vision Zero SF
was adopted as
a policy in 2014
‘10
‘11
‘12
‘13
‘14
‘15
‘16
‘17
‘18
‘19
‘20
The West Portal crash
brought this year’s
total fatalities up to 11
‘21
‘22
‘23
‘24
0
10
20
40
30
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from Vision Zero Traffic Fatalities: 2022 End of Year Report and San Francisco Fatality Notification Dashboard (2022-2024).
In Paris, residents voted to tax SUVs parking in the city center, and its mayor has been on a mission to install bike lanes across the city in recent years — which has resulted in significant increases in cycling. At the same time, Paris and its surroundings saw slight decreases in road deaths between 2016 and 2022, and significant decreases in both collisions and injuries.
Hoboken, New Jersey, celebrated seven years without a traffic death in January.
New York City, which also adopted Vision Zero in 2014, saw its a huge drop in pedestrian deaths in 2023. The city long ago banned right turns on red lights, reduced speed limits across the board in 2014, and got state approval in 2022 to expand its speed cameras, which automatically ticket drivers, to operate 24/7. It also widely expanded its bike network.
New York City officials say that the cameras helped reduce violations an average of 30 percent, and that traffic fatalities on streets with cameras dropped by 25 percent.
Here in the Bay Area, Fremont has seen some success, too. Hans Larsen, the city’s Public Works director, attributes an initial 50 percent drop in fatalities to “robust level of implementation” there. This included building a network of cycle tracks, protected bikeways and intersections with narrowed space for cars and bike lanes raised to sidewalk level.
Fremont now has the most “protected intersections” of any city in the country, Larsen said. In comparison, San Francisco was one of the first American cities to build one at 9th and Division streets, but has fallen far behind Fremont’s 14, with just five under construction this year.
Again this past weekend, a pedestrian was hospitalized after a driver crashed into another bus stop next to Golden Gate Park. San Francisco has already seen 11 traffic deaths in 2024, which is on track to be the most lethal year since at least 2005. Those 11 deaths outpace the seven homicides recorded in San Francisco so far this year.
City’s main Vision Zero tool shows limited success
As part of its Vision Zero plan, one of San Francisco’s main efforts to reduce traffic collisions has been its Quick-Build Program. These are “reversible, adjustable traffic safety improvements,” such as lane reduction, paint and signage, and traffic light timing changes on high-injury corridors.
These quick builds, however, are not particularly quick, sometimes taking years to complete.
Some, like the Folsom Street quick-build, with a parking-protected bikeway, traffic lane reduction, and daylighting for better intersection visibility, have seen a small dropoff in pedestrian and cyclist injuries or deaths. The sample size, however, is too small to be definitive.
But several areas with completed quick builds have seen about the same, or even increased, levels of traffic-related injuries and fatalities.
South Van Ness Avenue, for example, went from four lanes of traffic to three at the start of 2022, with new signal timing changes meant to reduce speeding. But just as many, and sometimes more, pedestrians, cyclists and people in cars have suffered injuries or been killed. Rene Kelly was among three killed on that road in 2022, and in July 2023 another hit-and-run driver killed 28-year-old Thomas McKean.
And in the Tenderloin, where speeds were reduced to 20 miles per hour across 17 corridors, injuries actually increased after the quick-build project — from 103 in 2021 to 135 in 2023. That does not necessarily signify that the quick-build made the problem worse, but that it is not having its intended effect of reducing harm.
Folsom Street between 2nd and 5th streets total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
2022
2021
Folsom Street quick-
build was completed
by the end of 2021
2020
2019
2018
0
1
2
3
4
5
People in vehicle
Other
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
5
Folsom Street quick-
build was completed
by the end of 2021
4
3
2
1
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
Tenderloin 17 corridors total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
2022
2021
2020
Tenderloin quick-build
was implemented
in fall 2021
2019
2018
0
10
50
110
130
140
20
30
40
60
70
80
90
100
120
People in vehicle
Other
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
140
130
Tenderloin quick-build
was implemented
in fall 2021
120
110
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
South Van Ness Avenue road diet area total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
2022
2021
South Van Ness
road diet was
implemented
late January 2022
2020
2019
2018
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
80
South Van Ness
road diet was
implemented
late January 2022
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
One issue, experts said, is that no one is minding the shop when it comes to Vision Zero data.
Dr. Rochelle Dicker, a former trauma surgeon at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, helped launch Vision Zero initiatives 10 years ago, including a database to better understand traffic incidents in San Francisco. The database looked to combine police data with information from local hospitals and emergency medical services.
It was, Dicker said, a “public-health way of looking at injury” and its prevention. But, she said, those who championed the program in the mid-2010s left — including herself — and no one took up the mantle.
That is not just a local problem. Although injury is the leading killer of Americans age 1 to 46, Dicker said, the National Institutes of Health has no institute for studying injury, the way it does for cancer or drug abuse.
“I could not at all tell you that Vision Zero efforts have failed in San Francisco … because nobody’s really studying it right now, that I know of,” Dicker said. “It’s more of a failure of getting it consistently operationalized, more than a failure of Vision Zero itself.”
The city’s primary focus also remains on fatalities, and the city’s quick-build efforts are focused on areas that see frequent severe and fatal injuries. But “fatalities are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dicker, and more granular data on injuries is needed.
The Embarcadero between Broadway and Mission Street total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
2022
2021
The Central Embarcadero
quick-build Project was
implemented in early 2022
2020
2019
2018
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
16
The Central Embarcadero
quick-build Project was
implemented in early 2022
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
Evans Avenue total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
2022
In Fall 2022,
Evans Avenue quick-
build was completed
2021
2020
2019
2018
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
16
14
In Fall 2022,
Evans Avenue quick-
build was completed
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
Franklin Street between Broadway and Lombard streets total injuries and fatalities from 2018 to 2023
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
People in vehicle
Other
2023
Franklin Street
quick-build was
completed in
February 2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
11
13
14
7
12
People in vehicle
Other
Pedestrian/Bicyclist
14
Franklin Street
quick-build
was completed
February 2023
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
‘18
‘19
‘20
‘21
‘22
‘23
Chart by Xueer Lu. Data from SF Open Data.
Jason Henderson, a geography professor researching the politics of mobility at San Francisco State University, agreed. When a pedestrian is nearly hit by a driver, or when parties involved in a minor collision don’t make a report, the data collected remains incomplete.
“The hundreds of microaggressions or near misses that don’t get included in the dataset is really underestimating the true situation,” Henderson said. “Most people don’t experience the actual physical violence of an injury or death, but they experience the intimidation. It’s enough to chase you off the street.”
Leticia, a friend of the Ramos Pinto-Oliveira family killed in West Portal this month, told Mission Local that the family had recently sold their car and were taking public transit to the zoo the day they were hit. Their deaths, however, could discourage others considering the same.
What needs to happen
Another part of the problem, according to the five experts Mission Local interviewed, is the city’s piecemeal approach. Over the years, street injuries and fatalities, while focused in higher-density neighborhoods closer to the city center, continue to occur across the city.
“You’re ending up doing this kind of patchwork — it’s a sinking ship, and there’s a hole bursting on part of the ship,” said street-safety advocate Luke Bornheimer. As one hole is patched with a bandage, another hole opens up. “You’re not fixing the actual structural problem that’s causing all of the holes.”
That is: Car dependency, and prioritization of car traffic on roadways.
What’s needed? Bold, citywide action, the experts said.
The mayor, for example, could declare a state of emergency to take more decisive action than state and national laws typically allow, said Shahum of the Vision Zero Network.
The type of citywide effort that Fremont embraced is what San Francisco needs, suggest experts like Shahum, Henderson and Larsen, not the reactive approach the city has taken so far. Even in Fremont, officials have struggled to maintain lowered fatality rates. But, as traffic fatalities rise across the country, it has been considered relatively successful.
In places like Paris, and in Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden, which have continued to reduce traffic injuries and fatalities, Vision Zero has been more of a success “because there’s the political will to create spaces that contain car speeds and vehicular behavior,” Henderson said. “American cities are failing, and San Francisco is not alone.”
Another major issue here, Henderson said, is a lack of police enforcement. San Francisco traffic enforcement has been at historic lows, despite ongoing concerns about speeding and reckless driving.
“In Europe, there’s enforcement … You’re punished, you lose points on your license. You really don’t wanna mess up,” Henderson said. In the U.S., however, “you might go to court and the judge says, ‘Oh you might’ve been having a bad day.’”
Henderson was once doored by a car passenger in West Portal while riding his bike. He was “completely where I was supposed to be,” when suddenly he was flung into parked cars.
But when police arrived, Henderson said they were resistant to take any action. It was only upon his insistence that one officer cited the person and took a report.
“I could’ve been killed, I could've been seriously injured. This has to be documented,” he said. And the offender, he said, should face some consequences.
Such enforcement, Hendersoin said, can help shift residents away from car use. If parents fear having their children riding or walking in the city, Henderson said, they will not wean off cars; quite the opposite. Fear of these incidents push people to purchase even larger, more dangerous vehicles, Henderson said.
It is unclear whether Lau, the 78-year-old woman who drove the SUV into Ramos Pinto and Oliveira’s family in West Portal earlier this month, will face charges. She was arrested and then released from custody.
But even in egregious cases, punishment is light. The intoxicated 81-year-old driver who killed cyclist Ethan Boyes in the Presidio last year, for instance, will serve only up to a year in jail after taking a plea deal.
There are new efforts underway to curtail vehicle speeds but, given the scope of the problem, they seem small.
San Francisco will have a network of 33 speed cameras installed across the city as early as 2025, under a new state pilot program. The city, however, has thousands of intersections.
At the state level, Sen. Scott Wiener introduced legislation in January that cars manufactured or sold in California should have speed-limiting technology built in that would prevent them from going more than 10 mph above the speed limit.
“It’s been kind of American culture in the past to design street systems to favor the fast movement of cars,” Fremont’s Larsen said, noting that high speed is the primary culprit in making roads unsafe.
But as traffic deaths surge across the country, he said, new strategies are needed.
“There's a lot of cities that are [reaching] eight to 10 years of implementation,” Larsen said. “And … they've picked all the low hanging fruit already. Now look into, what's Vision Zero 2.0?”
I have a question, why nobody talks about traffic law enforcement? Drivers that run red lights, stop signs, etc. never get penalized anymore. There is no accountability, therefore no motivation for following the rules. The city can modify streets in an attempt to make them safer, but impatient and self-centered drivers will always find a way around that if they face no consequence. Please, someone write about why the city isn’t pushing for traffic law enforcement. It blows my mind this subject is ignored by everyone.
There are six paragraphs about traffic citations in this very article, starting with “Another major issue here, Henderson said, is a lack of police enforcement.”
This is mentioned in the article above. Political candidates are also talking about it, mainly from the angle of needing more police, though it’s unclear to me why a small reduction in force (if that) would have been the cause of a 95+% reduction in citation, and that more police and more money for them would restore the enforcement.
Failure (? refusal?) to enforce traffic laws reflects the overall attitude toward law enforcement in general. This is what happens when a city “defunds the police.” Why should drivers (and cyclists) obey any speed limits or other laws when they can have anarchy? Passing more laws (or putting up more miles of plastic poles) is not going to help.
The problem starts at the top. Breed
SFPD was never defunded. You also don’t understand the concept. It would relieve cops from doing things social services should handle and give them more time for enforcement and crime investigation.
The reason Vision Zero advocates hesitate on enforcement is they worry the police will just use it as an excuse to harass minorities. Stoplight cameras and road design have the virtue of not being deeply racist.
Yes, as a biker it is dangerous out there – I’ve had a few close calls and I watch my hide pretty well because I know there’s little incentive for others to do so, with lack of enforcement and a devil-may-care attitude these days. The constituency of drivers doesn’t want to make any tradeoffs for ped safety – any time parking spots are removed, whether on Valencia for the bike lane or Geary for transit improvements, hell is raised and folks like Connie Chan or SFMTA cave to the pressure.
I see you, and think of this when I encounter cyclists when driving. the fear and caution exercised by many cyclists is palpable and evident. I think it’s a little less about parking spaces per se, and about drivers not respecting the rules of the road, giving the whole lane when appropriate, and above all, impatience. This is a small and narrow-road city, and the sight of so many drivers gunning the yellow only to run a red is shocking, even as an occasional driver.
“and the sight of so many drivers gunning the yellow only to run a red “. In part a result of the shortened green phases. In addition, the number of traffic lights, timed with indifference, has increased substantially over the last few years.
Enforcement is severely lacking. Go along Fulton adjacent to Golden Gate Park. The limit, which was 35 is now 30, with a stretch of 25 near 36th. The average speed is more around 40 to 45. The few people who try to drive the limit are tailgated or passed aggressively, yet it’s a rare day to see a cop on the street and even rarer to see said cop writing a ticket, despite cars speeding in plain sight.
SF is great at talking the talk, but terrible at walking the walk.
The thing about Fulton is that it’s long and straight, and you can make a pretty accurate guess as to how fast you need to go to make the next green light, generally about 40 MPH. If the traffic lights reward you for going 30 MPH, people will do that. Same for streets like Franklin, Oak, Park Presidio, etc.
Strong article! Small, but telling quibble: “speeds were reduced to 20 miles an hour”. No. Speed *limits* were reduced to 20 miles an hour. Without aggressive enforcement, or better yet *engineering* changes, changing speed limits has very little impact.
The city keeps having this fantasy that paint and signage change things, but the evidence from every other city is that you actually need concrete. Sadly that takes willpower, and as we know from other deaths around the city (where, a year and many empty promises later, the city repeatedly does nothing), there’s a grave shortage of that.
Yeah, putting up a sign in this city is meaningless. There may as well be a notation on every sign saying “(will not be enforced).”
A “no left turn” sign, followed by an official ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ equals no sign at all..
Exactly! The infrastructure itself needs to enforce safe driving.
Of course it’s piecemeal, this is San Francisco, it’s how we do things, poorly, in half-measures, and at great expense. That said, this idea or plan – “Vision Zero itself — a basic principle copied from Sweden that people should not be killed or injured on roadways” – means that we, as a city and as a country are missing the other, complimentary parts which in good measure is required to produce these outcomes. Those being strict licensing standards, Swedens is one of the most difficult and comprehensive to acquire, whereas here, a license barely requires fogging a mirror in any one of two dozen languages. driving here, wrongly, is seen as more of a right, not a privilege and these results are commensurate with the above.
“San Francisco’s piecemeal, reactive approach”. On perfect display at Santiago between 22nd and 23rd Ave’s. Couple years ago, a speeding, out of town driver high on meth wiped out a pedestrian crossing Santiago at 23rd Ave. Other than that, there were zero issues there, in particular as locals know to remember how the Taraval police station is right down the street. Yet, lo and behold, the neighborhood ended up with pointless speed bumps there. Another sign how Vision Zero is such a failure is the new street lighting that’s been put in place over the last few years that’s barely half a notch above 19th century gas lights. Turn these things up, and install lights at crosswalks. (Same time, talk to the feds to curb car manufacturers’ instance on LED lighting that blinds the bejesus out of oncoming traffic) /rant
So they end up building an aggravating herky-jerky obstacle course that leads to more, not less, aggressive driving. It is okay if not desirable to slow things down, but for heaven’s sake, if you want to safe lives, keep things rolling smooth.
All the road closures, slowing of thoroughfares, various no turning and other things that just punish the safe legal drivers also drives those aggressive drivers in to residential neighborhoods. How is that safe?
I live on South Van Ness and the turn lane has helped. However, people routinely and illegally use the turn lane as a passing lane. This makes it even more dangerous without enforcement. Come to think of it, I have never seen anyone stopped for speeding or other infringements on this street. The only time I have seen a police officer present is after an accident.
I have had several near misses with bikes when I have had the green light…not turning right by the way. The bikes ran the stops
Which is condoned in this city. The stop signs were placed there for a reason, namely, the intersection was deemed potentially dangerous. Did it ever occur to the bike coalition that if bikes get to violate the law, other groups just might do it too?
Well there’s a difference in consequence when a 3000 pound vehicle hits something and a bicycle going 10mph does. Bicycles have easy 360 degree vision, no blindspots, stop on a dime, and can actually hear the environment around them. Bikes and cars moving through intersections are not the same at all, so why do we treat them that way?
As one step, I think we need to ban right turns on red city-wide. I know most people follow the rules but too many do not. I run every morning, and roughly once a week I avoid getting run down solely because I assume that every car I encounter will violate the traffic laws. In almost every one of these instances, the driver approaches an intersection with the light red, stares straight to his left, then guns it and turns right if no car is approaching from the left. If I’m running from the right (light is green for me), he simply doesn’t look and doesn’t see me. And, of course, we need stiff fines for those who do have moving violations. I walk, run, bike, and drive in SF, and we should be able to safely co-exist, but too many careless drivers mean that’s where the reigning in needs to focus.
If I’m being kind I’d say drivers just don’t see them. Right on Red was just a colossally bad idea and should be rolled back within the city.
SFAtty, I notice this at 4 way stops as well. Several times at a nearby intersection I would see a car approaching the stop sign on my side of the street. Like you, I would wait, not step out into the lane. Multiple times those cars have stopped in the crosswalk, where I would have been walking. When the driver turns to look, the shock on their face that a pedestrian is just a few feet from their front wheel.
The recent accident is a tragedy. And so far it is just that , an accident. Using this instance to blame a lack of changes in San Francisco traffic safety is also a tragedy.
I am first a pedestrian and sometimes I ride a bike, since the 1980’s , and believe me allot has changed. I also drive a car. All of these modes of transportation can be dangerous.
ACCOUNTABILTY! No one takes responsibility, the pedestrian on the phone wearing ear buds, the cyclists who run stop signs and stop lights oh and how about riding the bike on the side walk! I lost a puppy to a speeding cyclist who just kept going after running over my chihuahua. This is a city , multipurpose transportation is the norm. Pedestrian’s need to get off their phones and be aware at all times What happened to common sense, “look both ways before you cross a street?’! Bicyclists are not cars but should follow the rules along along with the skateboards and scooters and get off the sidewalks!
But how can that happen when there is no accountability, blame some one else, it’s easier. The bike coalition sure makes a stink about bike safety but does little in my opinion to make their cyclists observe rules and safety. I love the hypocrisy, the same people on scooters, skateboards, bikes are also the same ones ordering online getting deliveries from cars and trucks, and using Lyft and Uber not o mention everything that gets delivered to our local stores.
A be aware of your surroundings! A campaign needs to be implemented to focus this. We also need to cite all those not obeying the law. This includes pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, etc.and motorists. EVERYONE NEEDS TO SLOW DOWN!
It’s misleading to include an chart with data on non-Vision Zero fatalities in an article on Vision Zero. This can confuse readers when the chart shows 41 deaths in 2022, but Vision Zero only counts 39.
The bias of the author also comes across in mentioning the record high deaths in 2022, but not the record drop in deaths in 2023 (the largest annual reduction since 2008). This data doesn’t support their thesis that things are getting worse.
I’ve posted something similar before, but I guess I’m on a mission to get this idea out there. The behavior of some of the drivers in this city has gotten out of control, as I’m sure many of you have experienced first-hand. Speeding, running red lights, and hit-and-runs have become far too common. Crosswalks in particular have become a “game of chicken” between pedestrians and vehicles. Our current strategy clearly isn’t working, so I’d like to see our legislative body empower the people of this city to fight back. The IRS provides rewards for information about tax fraud — 15% to 30% of the recoveries, through Form 3949-A and Form 211 — and New York City similarly provides rewards for reporting vehicles idling illegally through their Citizens Air Complaint Program. San Francisco should adopt a similar program, allowing citizens to report and provide evidence of illegal vehicular operation, and provide rewards in cases of successful citation or prosecution. We need to take back our streets and make it clear to everyone that reckless driving will cost you.
Additionally, we don’t need the police to levy these penalties, as there are several other law enforcement arms of the city which have the power to impose fines. Let the police focus on the most egregious offenders and other types of crime while streamlining the process of citizen reporting and issuing fines to drivers.
Now, is this proposal equitable? Are there negative second-order effects? I’m not qualified to make that judgment, but I haven’t heard this option proposed and I think it should be evaluated and considered.
The only way to make streets safer to pedestrians is to reduce traffic in the city. Many agree on that. However, you can’t just restrict personal vehicle trips without an undue burden on the working class and disabled people.
If SF wants to get serious about pedestrian safety, it should make MASSIVE investments in public transit, and dis-incentivize use of rideshares and delivery apps, tech shuttles, etc. But this won’t happen because city government doesn’t want to invest in public services, and doesn’t want to regulate business.
Everything is window dressing.
Andy, I agree that we need to invest in transit – a lot of people won’t use it, particularly at night, when it is dirty and home to out-of-control people.
Otherwise, situational awareness–on the parts of drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists–is probably the most important safety factor. Drivers using phones or looking at in-car screens are a menace. The same goes for cyclists who use their phone/listen to music while biking or pedestrians who are looking at their phone when stepping out to cross the road. All of the street modifications and restrictions don’t matter unless people–everyone–is paying attention. It’s convenient to blame this and that, but the fact is that we’re all responsible for our own safety.
Most pedestrian accidents occur away from intersections (NTSB data). SF spends tens of millions (at least) posting signs, restricting left and right turns, narrowing the streets, installing [hazardous] “bulb outs,” and installing ridiculous amounts of signage that is in itself distracting. Transit dictatorJeff Tumlin is on record as saying he doesn’t want anyone driving in SF. His zealotry has worsened traffic and created more congestion, pollution, and the likelihood of accidents. I have no doubt that this contributes to frustration and, in some instances, “road rage” in which people use their cars as weapons.
Part of what changes a “dirty and out of control” environment on public transit is an increased proportion of normal people using the services. It makes that behavior more and more unacceptable. Other actions being taken like effective citizen-reported BARTwatch enforcement and improved BART turnstiles preventing free rides will also change the environment. It is worth the investment.
Data tells us that the worse the traffic, the fewer the fatalities: Slow moving cars are less likely to kill. I think the big tell is that in other cities more serious about pedestrian safety they have enacted citywide 20mph speed limits. San Francisco?
Nothing constructive is going to happen in San Francisco. City Hall is totally subservient to motorists. If that were not the case we would see more car free areas; saturation citing, arrest, conviction and jail time law breaking motorists; a complete cessation of paying one iota of attention to the spoiled rotten with a sense of cradle to grave entitled motorists.
High Density and High Concentrations of Cars
Planetizen | Urban Planning
https://www.planetizen.com › news › 2010/08 › 45622-h…
Aug 21, 2010 — “Among urban areas, the highest auto densities are found in San Francisco-Oakland (4,000 veh/sq mi), San Jose (3,900), and Los Angeles …
SUVs are a significant contributor to the increased danger, and now the Police Dept seems to only be buying SUVs. With the proposition now allowing police to chase suspects, there needs to be a clear policy that there can be no safe chase involving SUVs, they are simply too dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists.
it’d be great if you could label these charts – it’s not clear what they’re measuring! the first chart says fatalities, but the rest must be injuries.
All these problems are there, but infrastructure for biking and walking has improved in the last 20 years. We do have some decent routes for bikes now and the curb cuts at intersections are really nice for wheelchairs and strollers. I feel like construction crews do a better job on temporary sidewalks too. It’s not all bad.
Hasn’t Leah Shahum done enough damage already to whatever she touches? She’s literally been paid to do work to keep cyclists safe for 20 years now and by her own admission, she’s failed. How many bites at the apple to these people expect?
The worst part of this is that Shahum’s V0 network urges advocates to magnify the threats as a means to gin up popular support for reforms. Not only has magnifying the threats not ginned up popular support, it has drawn advocates into a state of frenzied fearful froth as they believe their own bullshit. That’s how we got the debacle on Valencia which was just fine before.
During Shahum’s tenure at SFBC, I’d co-managed 2003’s Prop H and urged the SFBC to forward someone from the bicycle/ped community to the Police Commission so that we could have some general orders reform to rein in the commuter car-centric cops. A policing strategy was never considered, which has given motorists the green light to offend for decades.
We can’t engineer our way to street safety.
We need an honest, clear-eyed conversation about traffic fatalities in the United States that goes beyond the simplistic finger-pointing career activists seem fixated on.
Minimal driver training and testing, ever-growing personal vehicles more than 5000lbs in weight, a justice system that hardly prosecutes irresponsible drivers who kill, a society in the throes of drug/alcohol abuse (while driving or being homeless), land use decisions and high housing costs that force long commutes and car-dependence, a social norm that makes victim-blaming and lack of personal responsibility the norm, distracted driving by those using phones or large in-car touch screens, etc etc. These also need to be the forefront of the conversation. The same drunk driver who killed Ethan Boyes and the same elderly driver who killed the Ramos Pinto-Oliveira family in West Portal would not be stopped purely by street design in Sweden or the Netherlands or Denmark. I’ve been in all those places and irresponsible US drivers using commonly purchased cars here would just as easily kill innocent people there. It’s not just street design, folks. It’s a complex problem that demands more from everyone.
interesting how many comments appear to be complaining about enforcement rather than address the fundamental issue proliferation of the private vehicle in a city without adequate infrastructure to support them.
the city deliberately stopped building and ultimately demolished freeways through its core.
in a move toward a transit first policy, sfmta instituted transit only lanes on mission street.
in order to support cycling, the city essentially built a bicycle expressway in the middle of Valencia street.
where did anyone expect all those private vehicles to go?
our city leaders all have private vehicles and designated parking at taxpayer expense.
WalkSF only seems to capable of chasing the ambulance.
we cannot expect a bold initiatives from those who profit from the current model.
p.s. i watch daily how sfpd vehicles casually ignore the stop sign at my bus stop.
great reporting
Vision Zero is empirically a failed policy. A 2022 analysis of 68 Vision Zero cities–even after throwing out a big chunk of the data that showed no changes–could only find 2 cities that had a statistical decrease in fatalities (Ferenchak, 2022, “U.S. Vision Zero Cities: modal fatality trends and strategy effectiveness”, Transportation Letters). In just about every city implementing Vision Zero, you will find some newspaper articles lamenting the failure of Vision Zero.
New York City is regularly celebrated by local blog writers and “experts” as a success story, yet it had 245 traffic fatalities in 2023, including the highest ever for cycling. In 2014, it had 250 traffic fatalities. That is not very different than SF which has also held fairly steady while nationally, traffic fatalities have spiked.
The city does piecemeal projects.
When we want bulbouts, we only get a couple out of the 8 extensions needed for an intersection. Folsom & Beale is missing bulbouts from newly built sidewalks.
There are still many crosswalks where LPI is missing, frequently from newly installed lights (Main St direction @ Folsom).
Crosswalks missing on Bryant & Third, Folsom & 9th, and others.
When embarking on any supposedly safety-related project, SFMTA asks itself two questions:
1 – Are we making people who drive automobiles miserable?
2 – Are we doing what the SF Bicycle Coalition wants us to do?
If the answer to both of these questions is “yes”, then the they assume that they are making the streets safer, with bonus points for creating traffic jams. The results are not surprising.
Many of the things that SF has been willing to implement in the name of vision zero actually don’t help the situation, or implicitly blame the pedestrian for getting hit. For example: On 17th Street they added many traffic lights in the name of pedestrian safety – but really it was to improve traffic “flow” (read “speed”). Throughout the city, traffic lights were changed to add countdown timers (implying that the reason pedestrians were getting hit in intersections was because they were crossing against a light). On Van Ness they reduced the number of lanes and made them wider, with a center turning lane. Wider lanes encourage speed, and the center turning lane increases the distance to most oncoming traffic and prevents the left turn getting stopped by left-turning cars: cars will drive faster increasing the likelihood of collisions and the severity of injury from those collisions. There’s just no political will in this city because all the politicians are on the hook to ultra-rich donors. Ask your supervisor what they plan to do to reduce pedestrian injuries, and see if they are willing to compromise on traffic flow for it.
No matter how many soft hit posts get drilled into the street, the number of neon warning signs affixed to poles, or officers devoted to staffing routine traffic enforcement, our lack of Vision Zero progress stems from the Fire Department’s meddling and objections to *every single street safety proposal by the SFMTA.*
Why isn’t there more citizen outrage and reporting on this? Advocates should be calling for the resignation of the Fire Marshall and Fire Department chief.
Yet another case where progressives hate the police, and then when police are needed, complain that they aren’t omnipresent and don’t take immediate and decisive action.
Spending the last decade-plus attacking everything the police do has consequences. Adults have known this all along.
It doesn’t have to be people with guns that give tickets.
Troll much? Progressives don’t hate the police. If you hold someone accountable when the do something wrong, is that hating? Do police hate all drivers when they give a driver a ticket?
I don’t think people hate the police – even people of color support the police as a means of keeping crime down. They/we do hate when the police cross the line and attack people of color, cover up for the bad cops, and get away with it – over and over again.