A man was killed at around 2 a.m. on Saturday morning in a hit-and-run in Bernal Heights, the second hit-and-run in San Francisco in 24 hours.
Police arrived at the scene at Cortland Avenue and Anderson Street at around 2:10 a.m. and transported the man to the hospital, where he died. Officers were searching for the suspectโs vehicle, the department said, but have yet to find it or make any arrests.ย
In a GoFundMe posted Oct. 4, the California chapter of the Nepali cultural organization Non-Resident Nepali Association identified the victim as Binod Budhathoki, 30 years old.
The text, translated from Nepali by Google Translate, said that Budhathoki had been returning home from celebrating the Dashain festival, a Hindu religious festival, when he was hit.
The post said that he left behind an 8-year-old daughter.
Videos from a business ownerโs street-facing cameras showed that, prior to the collision, a silver sedan had been speeding down Cortland Avenue.
In the store video, a thud can be heard shortly after the car passes the camera.
In a separate hit-and-run near Buena Vista Park on Friday night, two people were sent to the hospital in critical condition.
Budhathoki isnโt the only person in recent years to be killed on Cortland. The most recent deaths were Miguel Angel Barrera-Cruz in June 2024 and Marlene Aron in 2018. Neighbors say they know other pedestrians who survived but were badly injured.
The corridor has been designated part of the cityโs โhigh-injury network,โ streets that see a disproportionate number of fatalities and injuries. In 2014, the city committed to โVision Zero,โ a plan to eliminate all pedestrian fatalities, but the plan has failed.
โThis is a very sad situation, and it’s entirely predictable,โ said Mahdi Rahimi, a member of Bernal Safe Streets, a group of roughly 60 neighbors who advocate for street-safety improvements.ย
Though the speed limit on Cortland is 20 mph, Rahimi said people frequently drive far faster down the street, with cars often blowing through stop signs.
Cortland is a straight and direct route between Mission Street and Bayshore Boulevard, and drivers often speed.ย
โThey treat it as a highway,โ Rahimi said.
Rahimi also says that visibility at intersections on the street is poor. Right now, he said, people frequently park in the red zones near corners, obstructing driversโ views of pedestrians on the sidewalk. He would like the city to install planters or some other physical barrier in those spots to ensure they stay clear.ย
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency is working on creating more visibility at intersections by the end of 2026. It claimed that work along high-injury roads would be complete by summer 2025.
In response to Budhathokiโs death, Bernal Safe Streets is calling for the city to take action. In response to their request, on Oct. 7 at 5:30 p.m, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, the police, and Municipal Transportation Agency are holding a town hall at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center.
โI am devastated to learn about this young personโs tragic death,โ Fielder said. โWeโve had way too many reckless drivers in San Francisco, and my office has flagged Cortland to MTA and SFPD all year as a dangerous corridor prime for traffic calming and traffic enforcement.โ
Anyone with information is asked to contact the SFPD at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD.
Speed bumps. SF MTA wants to slow cars around the city overall, but there are some streets, like Cortland, where people race their cars when they can, so make those streets difficult to speed on by adding bumps.
Laughable. “Project Zero” is a scam to steal ever more from city budgets.
The only solution to traffic laws being broken is enforcement.
Where did you read that anyone was racing here?
Speed bumps do nothing to stop hit and runs. Strike 3.
420 homeless neighbors dying each year
838 million dollar SFPD budget (up 6% this year, but they still cry poor)
no lights on crosswalks, no public campaign by the city for billboards for awareness–
Its everything for AI cameras and Big Tech.
Our lives dont mean much to politicians. I fear they will milk this tragedy for all its worth to install more surveillance and AI crap.
at the meeting tonight Jackie Fielder actually told us, “keep that pressure on us if you want to see change.”
Why? Whatever happened to just doing the right thing? some motion lights in a crosswalk dont cost that much. Plenty of other cities have em.
Good thing we have all those fancy new speeding cameras so the city can rake in $1M a month, and yet people are still getting mowed down on Cortland.
I completely agree that speed cameras cannot be the only solution. However I am glad we are taking in income from those who fail to follow the law. I only wish it were progressive like Finland so we can have more impact and more funds to make more serious and effective solutions like raised crosswalks, bollards, and more frequent transit options.
“Videos from a business ownerโs street-facing cameras showed that, prior to the collision, a silver sedan had been speeding down Cortland Street.”
Not sure how a camera can accurately determine a vehicle’s speed unless it is a specialized speed camera.
A 20 mph limit means you can legally do up to 31 mph. Was this vehicle doing 32 or more?
That is false. It is not โlegalโ to go 11 mph over the speed limit. Especially in a residential area. Please provide an any evidence supporting your the ridiculous claim. In fact, in certain conditions you could potentially get a ticket for unsafe driving if youโre driving the posted speed limit. I hope youโre not a regular driver on Cortland. My daughter walks on Cortland on her way to school.
When the speed cameras were installed it was specifically stated that you will not get a ticket unless you were going 11 mph or more above the stated limit.
So in practice you have a leeway of 11 mph which, in the case of this highway, means that 31 is OK but 32 is not.
You can definitely come up with a reasonable estimate of a car’s speed from a standard security camera, as long as you know its frame rate, have a fixed object of known length as a reference point, and the camera isn’t moving or too out of focus.
Regardless, it doesn’t matter what speed the car was going if it blew through a stop sign. That’s always illegal, and even hitting someone at 20mph can still kill them.
I’ve personally seen a car that matches this description driving at least 40mph down Cortland late at night blowing through all of the stop signs. It very well could’ve been the same driver.
Damn, shootings at 16th and Mission go unreported on by Mission Local, unremarked on by Jackie Fielder, but once a hit and run criminal runs over and kills someone in Bernal, an immigrant at that amongst constituents that count, all of a sudden the apparatus of government kicks into responsive mode.
Street safety treatments presume that motorists are going to follow these (hopefully) intuitive treatments.
It is impossible to engineer street safety to defend against a hit and run speeding criminal and this kind of crime cannot be prevented by SFPD enforcement even if they were to try.
Wow Marcos. Great argument. And there are articles about shootings on ML. Should I reply to those with โsure, lots of concerns about shootings. But what about traffic deaths? Doesnโt matter anyway because nothing will work so just donโt do anything!โ Because if we canโt prevent all causes of death in SF, we canโt work to prevent any. That is some real productive input.
I’m commenting on the disproportional response of the political class and ML to tragedies in a neighborhood that counts, Bernal, and one that does not count, the North Mission.
If you are okay with legitimating apartheid colonialism, just say so.
Get outta here with that โapartheid colonialismโ nonsense as a response to my point that we should certainly not ignore opportunities to reduce traffic deaths simply because itโs difficult and/or there are other causes of death that need addressing as well. I never said โwho cares about the Missionโ did I? No, of course not.
And feel free to do the research regarding MLโs reporting on ALL issues facing ALL residents of the community. Youโll find they do a good job of not only reporting the tragedies but also highlighting members of the community in the Mission who are involved in projects to improve safety and create opportunity.
Perhaps youโre one of those people putting in the work to improve things. And perhaps you could motivate or inform people to contribute and support your effort. But how would anyone read your comments, with your dismissal of their concerns and the name calling, and think youโre anything but an angry crank that should just be ignored. Not sure what you hope to achieve.
Ever heard of the law of diminishing returns? You reduce unsafe driving via enforcement, and there is below-minimal enforcement going on at SFPD for the last decade or so.
Pretending you’re going to prevent hit and runs (!) with speed bumps and silly stuff like that is not only a joke, it’s a massive waste of money and scam you’re falling for that benefits “non” profit groups that literally exist to promote that BS despite the actual results. No, it’s not possible to prevent this, but you can make it less likely to occur by enforcing traffic laws like we used to do. Period.
The main issue is that there are known predictors of traffic related deaths. There is so much data on what works and what doesn’t. We can reduce traffic deaths with political will. There are so many examples of it around the world. The same is not quite so easy for homicide rates. We do see trailers to that. Certainly, ML reports on shootings etc, but it is not as clear cut in the research and data.
Yes, those predictors are driver distraction/inattention, confusion due to poor street design and maliciousness.
VisionZero claimed that we could engineer our way to safety when it is only true that we can engineer our way TOWARDS safety. The irrationality of human behavior means that we can NEVER achieve 100% safety. Acknowledging this and the impossibility of reaching 100% is not endorsing harm, it is confirming how things work in the real world. Sometimes your number comes up and it sucks.
One more time: it is not possible to engineer our way to safety in ways that prevent malicious actors from hurting and killing people. If you put speed bumps in the middle of the blocko, for instance, that does not stop a malicious motorist from picking up enough speed to run the stop sign at the end of the block and do as much harm.
SFMTA has proven repeatedly that it has no clue as to how to engineer for safety. The agency is purely reactive. The “High Injury Network” is a political, not data driven classification. This leads to a culture of “do something, do anything, do it NOW” based on the post-traumatic demands of whatever constituency that counts. These are politically driven reactionary responses.
It’s not impossible to engineer street safety to defend against hit and runs caused by speeding and running stop signs. It’s actually quite simply: speed bumps. That’s backed up by empirical evidence, as is the effect of enforcement of laws on reducing crime. We should do both.
I’m sure the bicyclist mafia is pleased. Grist to the mill.
Wow, what callous comments. Come on, people, someone DIED here! Leave your politics with bike vs. car stuff for another day and mourn the dead, as he certainly deserves. Thank you.
You can focus on what you want, I can focus on what I want.
That’s because we’re two different people. I’m a reasonably rational person who knows grifting “non-profit” groups use hit and runs that can’t possibly be prevented as PR talking points for their milking of the taxpayer money they waste, and you think someone needs to express sympathy to an unknown person online as if virtue signaling so did anything real.
You handle your lane, I’ll handle mine. Thank YOU.
Bicyclist mafias are pleased anytime a car kills anyone.
You have no idea what caused this accident any more than they do, but we can both be assured that “non” profit groups will use it in their PR propaganda. It will be used by said groups to promote a BS agenda and obtain more funding. Period. It IS callous, they are political ghouls. They absolutely need events like this to justify their trough-slopping, and they use it accordingly. Is that respectful of the death to you, Bee?
Meanwhile, traffic enforcement from SFPD is all time low.
If you want to solve a problem you start with what works.
Pretending every hit and run is “solvable” by “non”-profit agenda puff pieces and massive public waste is maddeningly stupid.
You want my personal condolences because someone was killed, condolences. Did you know them, or is this just how virtue signalling works online? Of course it’s tragic – and it will be used as propaganda equally tragically, was the point.
Ironic that you’re claiming that this tragic incident is being used as propaganda for the ” ‘non’-profit agenda,” while you use this tragic incident as propaganda for your anti- SFPD, anti-bicyclist agenda.
You’re right that enforcement helps, but so do speed bumps. We should do both.