A gruesome crash in San Francisco on Friday afternoon left a cyclist hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after a dump truck hit her and dragged her for about 20 feet, according to accounts from residents and businesses near the crash.
The woman survived but is still in recovery, according to the San Francisco Police Department. Bystanders described a horrific injury in which the cyclist’s leg was maimed.
Neighbors also described the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Irving Street, where the crash occurred, as “crazy” and “hectic,” and said they witness “close calls” there on a daily basis.
“I live right here, and I feel like I’m risking my life crossing that intersection daily,” said Michele Carlson, bartender at the Fireside Bar.
Seventh Avenue is a thoroughfare with heavy car traffic that connects the Inner Sunset to the southern and eastern parts of the city. On Irving Street, there are train tracks, N-Judah trains and double-parked loading trucks or cars picking up food from nearby restaurants.
There are no designated bike lanes on either street, and cyclists share the road with motor vehicle traffic.
“We just hear people honking all the time. It’s a busy area. You got the trains. People riding their bikes. There’s a hill right here. So people come fast down it,” said Stefan Miller, a tattooist at One Shot Tattoo on Seventh and Irving.
Carlson, the bartender, agreed. “People don’t notice, because it’s such a thoroughfare,” she said. Drivers coming from busy Laguna Honda Boulevard, she said, “don’t realize that you need to slow the fuck down.”
Most people Mission Local talked to recalled seeing the brutal aftermath of the crash, but details on how it happened were unclear. The details, as described below, are disturbing.
The cyclist, who was wearing a helmet, was caught between a huge U.S. Foods truck parked in the right lane while unloading, and a dump truck trying to go around it on the left. The dump truck hit the cyclist. It was unclear which direction the cyclist was heading.
The truck was about one-third full with “dirt, concrete and stones,” said Brian Braden, a barber at Surreal You Hair Design on Irving Street.
After hitting the cyclist, the dump truck driver apparently did not know she was on the ground, said Mercy, a barista at the Beanery Cafe near the intersection. Mercy heard people yelling at the truck driver to stop.
The cyclist “was screaming. Her whole leg was scraped off, down to the bones. All along for about 20 feet,” said Braden. “All pieces of her leg. The fat. The muscle. The blood. The bone.” Her bike seemed intact, he said. After she was sent to the hospital, one of her shoes was left on the ground, covered in blood.
Bystanders rushed to help, gathering towels from the nearby tattoo shop and nail salon to stop the bleeding. An EMT who happened to be nearby put a tourniquet on her leg before the paramedics arrived.
The driver, who remained on scene, was “sitting on the curb, crying,” Braden said.
“It was a rough twist of fate,” said Miller, the tattooist. “It was the wrong place, wrong time for everybody.”
7th and Irving is ‘like a freeway’
It was a day that Mercy had long feared would come.
“We were expecting this, terrified an incident will happen one day,” the barista said. “The way they drive, the way they turn, everything is like a freeway.”
Over the past 10 years working at the Beanery Cafe, Mercy has seen so many pedestrians yelling at drivers at the intersection in fear of being hit, she said. After Friday’s crash, she plans to go to the city on her day off to urge it to do something.
Many of the regulars at the cafe are seniors, people with walkers or in wheelchairs, she said. “It’s very scary to see them crossing. They may be hit one day,” she said.
San Francisco, which in 2014 adopted a “Vision Zero” plan to reduce traffic deaths to zero in 10 years, has failed in its goal. Last year, there were 25 deaths, slightly lower than the rolling average of 33 deaths a year since 2005.
Cars have killed at least five pedestrians in San Francisco so far this year, according to Walk SF, a pedestrian safety nonprofit.
Residents agree that the city needs to address pedestrian and bike safety at Seventh and Irving.
When Carlson lived on Seventh Avenue between Lawton and Kirkham streets some 15 years ago, “it used to be such a freeway. The cars would just be flying,” she recalled.
Cyclists rode on the sidewalk, and she worried about her toddler being hit by bikes.
Then the city added two new bike lanes, which slowed the traffic along her stretch of Seventh Avenue, and cyclists stopped riding on sidewalks. That worked, and it could be a first step at this intersection.
Another solution could be not allowing cars to turn right on red lights during rush hours, Carlson said.
Braden, the barber, said the city should install speed cameras, of the sort that have been set up throughout the city, at Seventh Avenue and Irving Street.
“We need them here,” he said, “because drivers really come speeding down the hill.”
The solution just has to be more than a speed-limit sign, Braden continued.
“It says 25 miles per hour. And I laugh,” he said. “Maybe the bicycles and scooters, but the cars ain’t doing no 25. They don’t care.”
I was rear-ended at this intersection many years ago while traveling north on 7th and waiting to make a left on to Irving. My car was totaled and I had whiplash. Me and my dog were nearly hit by a car just three days ago while crossing Irving on 7th by a driver turning left on to Irving and just going very fast and not looking. I don’t know what the fix here is, but a fix is needed.
Another cyclist was hit today at Fulton and Masonic. Two pedestrians dead in North Beach and Mission last week. A child dead the week before. Car crashes today alone blocked the 31 at Balboa and 20th, and the N at 30th, which caused ripple effects across the entire west side. All because the city is too afraid of angry drivers to make even the most modest changes to the most dangerous places.
No one speeds in Alameda. It’s not because of the infrastructure, it’s because they know that of they speed in Alameda they will get a ticket.
Unfortunately, our police force DGAF about enforcing traffic laws. Make SF one of those places that has a reputation for giving traffic tickets, and you’ll cut down a ton on people speeding, running red lights, not yielding to pedestrians.
And yet the city of Alameda only has a slightly better rate (per 100k residents) of severe injury and fatal traffic crashes as San Francisco. We can’t police our way out of traffic violence. It just doesn’t work that way.
I wonder whether to US Food truck was cited for the parking in lane that created this hazardous condition. SFs approach to double parking is absurd.
Get rid of double parking and the city would grind to a halt.
Are there any accountability mechanisms if the City doesn’t reach the zero death goal? It’s stupid we live in a city of billionaires and innovation and we have to fear for our lives in our neighborhood streets.
Unfortunately there are already solutions and they aren’t expensive. We can use designs that have been successful in other countries. But it isn’t billionaires stopping these, it’s drivers, small business owners, and the years of required “listening tours” and town halls.
The billionaire innovators actually have a solution for this, it’s called self driving cars.
lorcan, the “Vision Zero” campaign is more politics than policy. It is designed to show voters that the city “cares” when in reality it is never going to upset the 70% of SF voters who have a vehicle in their household.
It might work in medieval cities like Stockholm and Copenhagen. It ain’t gonna work in the most car-centric state in the US. Voters here are willing to accept a few deaths a year as the price for comfort and convenience.
There hasn’t been a single death on the streets of Hoboken, NJ in three years. I know it’s a much smaller city but it shows that US cities can achieve Vision Zero or near zero when they actually listen to planners and policy experts and stop kowtowing to Boomers.
Articles about the 2-year-old mowed over and killed at the 4th and Channel intersection a few days ago had an eerily similar report of the driver crying and hitting herself in the head after realizing what she had done.
Drivers need to realize that SF streets are not freeways and it’s okay if it takes a couple extra minutes to arrive at their destination. Unfortunately the police have abrogated their responsibility to enforce traffic laws so change will have to come from the bottom up. I’m not hopeful.
“The solution just has to be more than a speed limit sign, Braden continued. “It says 25 miles per hour. And I laugh,” he said. “Maybe the bicycles and scooters, but the cars ain’t doing no 25.”
Bear in mind that you get a 10-11 mph leeway on speeding tickets. So a 25 limit actually means 35 or so.
If you really want the traffic to do 25, then it should be a 15 mph limit.
was the dump truck coming from the UCSF construction site? The pedestrian killed on Parnassus in October 2024 was killed by a similar construction truck/driver involved with UCSF construction
A few years back, the City changed the signal timing at the intersections up at Woodside and Laguna Honda Blvd. as well as Clarendon and Laguna Honda Blvd. It’s been a mess since. Traffic used to flow easy, now it backs up for no good reason, and drivers take their frustration down the hill. Other direction, Lawton and 7th Ave needs better signal timing as well to reduce the regular backups on 7th Ave
After these events we hear that they were predictable & preventable
Why does it take a human toll before these crystal ball holders say something?
“We were expecting this, terrified an incident will happen one day,” the barista said. “The way they drive, the way they turn, everything is like a freeway.”
Over the past 10 years working at the Beanery Cafe, Mercy has seen so many pedestrians yelling at drivers at the intersection in fear of being hit, she said. After Friday’s crash, she planned to go to the city on her day off to urge it to do something.
Many of the regulars at the cafe are seniors, people with walkers or in wheelchairs, she said. “It’s very scary to see them crossing. They may be hit one day,” she said.
You can’t turn left onto Lincoln on 7th, so I think a dedicated left turn signal might also help slow traffic down — lots of vehicles rush the light in an effort to make the left turn, pressuring and endangering pedestrians and cyclists. I heard about the crash after it happened and spent the whole weekend feeling extra anxious at that intersection.
I wish it didn’t take a severe accident for change to happen! An elderly man was killed at Stanyan and Parnassus by a dump truck several months ago, and only after that were proper crossing signals installed for pedestrians, along with pedestrian priority (walk signal starts while the traffic light is still red, letting pedestrians get a head start). Similar efforts could help at 7th and Irving, but frankly could also be improved citywide.
I pass through Seventh Avenue and Irving Street on foot often and never notice anything unsafe about it. Big trucks have trouble seeing people on bikes, one rider was killed by a recycling truck several years ago near 16th & Mission.
Daily I see motorists driving thru crosswalks occupied by pedestrians. I see motorists driving at pedestrians before either the car or the pedestrian stops mid intersection. I have motorist friends who say they could not pass the written drivers license test without studying. The California Department of Motor Vehicles decided about a year ago to no longer require elders to periodically take the written test to “improve the user experience”. They will instead go by the number of crashes. The SF Police abandonment of traffic safety is evident.
I’ve been calling out this two-block bike lane gap for years. Coming north, the bike lane disappears just before Judah, leaving you to fend for yourself for the last two blocks into Golden Gate Park (or before reaching Hugo Street, which is the designated bike route toward 3rd Ave and the Kezar Drive sidepath, and from there to JFK Promenade or the Panhandle path). It might not fix everything, but as a starting point, remove the center turn lane and stripe bike lanes on those two blocks. Pretty simple. The best time to do it was before a life-altering injury, the second best time is now.
Why does this article try to place the blame on ordinary drivers make zero mention that the dump truck is part of that frenetic street construction happening a couple streets down further between Lawton and Kirkham. 7th street is so narrow, they do a horrible job of managing traffic while work is in progress. Blame the right entities!
There is not a bike lane on Irving because you shouldn’t ride your bike there. Or really on any street where Muni surface trains run. Muni trains are the most efficient way to move large numbers of people as opposed to investment in ableist, ageist, unsafe and expensive bike infrastructure.
I watched enough reruns on KTVU back in the day to know what Mr Spock would say – the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
I’d like to direct your attention to the experience of residents in this neighborhood that once the bike lane on 7th was installed, car traffic on 7th slowed and cyclists were able to stop riding on the sidewalk. Riding a bike may not be for everybody, but neither is driving a car. And it is a documented fact that adding cycling infrastructure to streets is one of the cheapest ways to make the streets safer for everyone. Which is the opposite of ableist.
if you are going to have trains and bicycles on the same street, it’s probably safest to not have cars on there also. market street with lanes for trains with enough space for buses and cabs and bikes seem to work ok. I wonder how many accidents with bicycles there have been on market and how it might change if they allow cars on there again.
“ ableist, ageist, unsafe and expensive” wait till you learn what a car is!
By that logic you should be advocating for the removal of private vehicles on those same streets.