Two pedestrians were struck by a car Friday afternoon in the Mission District and left with potentially life-threatening injuries, according to police and fire officials at the scene.
Four more people were left with minor injuries after the car also struck another oncoming vehicle.
Fire Department Assistant Chief Bill Storti confirmed that six people were transported to the hospital. The two pedestrians were rushed to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries. Two people from each vehicle, who sustained comparably minor injuries, were also hospitalized.
When Mission Local arrived at the scene, the area at 22nd Street and South Van Ness Avenue had been cordoned off with police tape. Shoes and clothes were strewn across the street, and one slipper was on the roof of the colliding car. One of the people from the car that struck the pedestrians was being loaded into a neck brace.
Passengers from the oncoming vehicle that was struck stood on the sidewalk before going into a fire department ambulance.
Amerie Wheeler lives a few doors down from the scene of the collision. She was in her home when she heard the sound of brakes screeching followed by a “big crash” and someone screaming something like “Help,” “Call 911,” and “Oh my god,” she said.
Wheeler went outside, where she saw two people lying on the street. One of them was conscious, Wheeler said, and kept asking about the other, who was not responding.
Storti, the assistant fire chief, said he was under the impression that both pedestrians would survive the incident.
San Francisco streets have been a killing field this year. I hope WalkSF can finally get the city to do something substantial about it
WalkSF and others TOLD SFMTA that the South Van Ness project wasn’t doing enough. Paint and plastic won’t protect anybody. The fire department has blood on their hands for always silently vetoing concrete protections.
For real! Proper bollards please. Plastic sticks are such a joke.
Emergency vehicles sometimes need the full width of the road, which is why we use the plastic bollards.
SVN is crazy wide, it can easily accommodate bollards *and* a ladder truck.
SFFD has veto power.
For starts, SFMTA should open Mission St. to northbound traffic again. Funnelling traffic on SVN ihas been a disaster.
But no one heeds that “funneling.” The next time I see someone take the “mandatory” right at 20th will be the first.
Check out Mission -> Army -> SVN a few blocks south
That could have been me. I cross South Van Ness on foot and bike all the time, even had a near miss when a car that collided with another went up on the sidewalk five feet away from me. The reduction from four lanes to three in 2022 was a slight improvement, but it’s clearly not enough. South Van Ness should be narrowed with wider sidewalks and a median to slow cars down.
I have to respectfully disagree. The city has narrowed streets all over the with parklets, bike lanes, bulb outs, and bizarre parking patterns) . It also has reduced the traffic light cycles markedly (15 seconds on the east-west streets in the Mission). The traffic in “rolling” has gone way up with e bikes, scooters, and other motorized two-wheelers. I think it is making drivers more angry and reckless. I’m not excusing reckless driving. But the city needs to consider that its actions may be having the opposite effect from what’s intended.
There are definitely a lot of “e” everything and a lot don’t follow traffic laws leading to near misses. This makes it more dangerous for everyone. A lot of pedestrians don’t pay attention either. People should act defensively in all situations. Also people need to realize it’s hard to see sidewalks and walkways when there are parked cars. Whenever I’m walking I assume cars can’t see me as well as I can see them.
Scott, the problem is that almost every road parallel to SVN has been messed about with. You have Valencia with its ever moving bike lanes, Mission with its bus lanes, Folsom is a slow-moving bus route and so on.
So SVN represents the only north-south conduit where drivers can make reasonable progress. The kind of infrastructure changes you suggest also have the effect of frustrating drivers, causing them to go faster where and when they can.
Meanwhile 22nd is an important “cut through” route between Potrero and Guerrero, and the only decent east-west route between Duboce and Army.
This city government feels useless in securing pedestrians lives from dangerous drivers.
It should also be noted 22nd St is supposed to be a Slow Street as SFMTA voted several years ago.
https://www.sfmta.com/projects/22nd-street-slow-street
“Slow Streets” in the Mission are phoned in by SFMTA and are purely advisory.
I wonder if commenters will get as riled up about this as they did about Waymo hitting a cat.
@cardinal Foolish question. Of course they won’t. The riled up isn’t about blood on the streets. It’s about whose streets they are. Drivers(culturally appropriate ones) have priority above all others.
We’ll see if the supervisor decides to hold a press conference and propose legislation, and if reporters decide to a series of follow-up articles and think pieces.
I think the Honda CRV turned onto 22nd from South Van Ness hit the two pedestrians sent them flying and then crashed into the Honda Civic
The Honda was traveling east on 22nd
At a high rate of speed when the light was redn
We could solve all the City’s budget problems with red light cameras throughout the Mission. Red lights are suggestions.
I would say it would be nice to have SFPD enforcement of traffic laws, but that ship has long since sailed.
Mayor Lurie said “As always, public safety is our No. 1 priority.” But he was talking about a theoretical foreign attack on SF, not the carnage that actually happens here regularly on our streets.
I almost died yesterday (Friday).
Dude came at me in the middle of a crosswalk without a hint of slowing down.
Broad daylight.
Had eye contact with him the whole time.
Not my first close call within a SF crosswalk death zone.
San Francisco is governed more by Aleister Crowley’s principle of “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” than by actual enforced traffic/criminal law.
Pedestrians are becoming an endangered species in Daniel Lurie’s San Francisco.
Sure blame Lurie…makes sense…