It’s been a decade since Judy Yu was struck by a speeding driver while crossing Park Presidio Avenue in San Francisco’s Richmond district.
The force of the vehicle flung her body to the other side of the road, rupturing her spleen and fracturing her ribs and arm. She survived, but the collision left her with a brain injury that caused severe cognitive impairments.
At times, she can be violent, delusional, and suffer from suicidal tendencies — a far cry from her former self, according to her daughter Jenny Yu.
“Because of that experience, I learned in real life how unsafe our streets are,” Jenny Yu told The Frisc. “I want to be a voice for my mother. She’s not able to stand up and talk about what this has done to her.”
On Monday, Jenny Yu did just that when she spoke in front of the state Assembly’s transportation committee in favor of AB 550 — Assemblymember David Chiu’s latest bill to promote traffic safety.
The bill would allow six California cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, to pilot the use of cameras to capture the license plates of speeding drivers.
[Update: In late May, the California Assembly’s Appropriations Committee let AB 550 die without discussion or comment. Chiu tweeted that he was “deeply sad & frustrated.”]
San Francisco already has various types of automated traffic enforcement, but not speed cameras, which are not legal in California. Already deployed in more than 150 cities across the U.S., the cameras have helped reduce serious injury and fatal crashes by up to 58 percent, according to one study.
Erica Kato, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, told The Frisc it has been working on a camera plan in anticipation of Chiu’s bill becoming law. The automated cameras would be placed on streets in the high-injury network — the 13 percent of city streets where 75 percent of all traffic collisions occur. Kato declined to say which streets would get cameras first.
Park Presidio, where Judy Yu was hit, is a dangerous state highway that runs through a dense neighborhood, and until now the city has only made marginal stabs at safety.
Pedestrian safety advocates say automated enforcement there, and on other city streets like Geary, Mission, and the Embarcadero, could be a breakthrough. There’s no doubt that reduced speed means less harm. Pedestrians hit by a car going 20 miles per hour have dramatically higher survival rates than those hit by a car going 45 miles per hour.
“California has experienced an epidemic of traffic violence,” Chiu, who represents San Francisco in the Assembly, told The Frisc. “Every year for the past five years over 1,000 Californians have died in speed-related traffic collisions, and tens of thousands more have been injured. These statistics have become background noise for some who chalk it up to car culture or otherwise think it’s a cost of driving, but the tragedy is these deaths are completely preventable.”
The automated cameras would be placed on streets near schools, parks, senior centers, and other roads where serious collisions frequently occur. Signs alerting drivers of photo enforcement, along with the posted speed limit, would be located within 500 feet of the cameras. Only warning notices would be issued during the first 30 days of the program.
Chiu introduced a similar bill — AB 342 — back in 2017, but it failed to make it through the Assembly’s transportation committee, with opponents, including law enforcement agencies and civil liberties groups, voicing concerns around privacy, fines, and enforcement.
A stubborn problem
AB 550, which passed unanimously through the same committee on Monday, has tried to address some of those concerns. The bill outlines instructions for data retention and prohibits the use of facial recognition technology. The program can be adjusted street by street. For example, if the cameras on a particular street haven’t cut violations by at least 25 percent within 18 months, they can be removed from that street.
Encouraging alternatives to cars and making streets safer has been an elusive goal in San Francisco. The city suffered the same number of traffic deaths in 2020 as it did in 2019, despite COVID keeping people home and off the streets. (The issue looks even worse nationwide, as deaths from motor vehicle collisions in 2020 reached a 13-year high, according to the National Safety Council.)
It’s even more jarring because the city pledged in 2014, via the Vision Zero initiative, to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, all the while building out safety-related features like bike lanes and crosswalk upgrades.
While the city has lowered speed limits on some streets, advocates say enforcement with cameras is the next step. Jodie Medeiros, executive director at advocacy organization Walk SF, says that speed cameras are “one of those tools in our toolbox that we have not had access to” because of state law.
“I think that these cameras let drivers know that they’re being monitored, and they need to be very cautious in how they drive and follow the rules,” Medeiros points out.
Behavior modification
The concept of cameras monitoring driver behavior isn’t new to San Francisco. SFMTA already has red light cameras at 13 intersections across the city. Cameras are also affixed at the front of Muni buses to catch drivers parking illegally in transit-only lanes.
But speed safety cameras are different. While red light runners face point violations on their license, Chiu’s AB 550 pilot program will issue speeders non-criminal citations, akin to getting a parking ticket. To appease fears of the cameras turning into a city cash cow, the fines would be funneled back to the program or into other traffic-calming initiatives. The goal, according to Chiu, is to ultimately change drivers’ behavior.
There are a lot of people who prefer to redesign our streets so that they don’t invite speeding, but redesigns are not something we can wait for.
Jonathon Kass, SPUR transportation policy manager
“The red light camera is just a different experience,” he says. “What can sometimes happen is you have folks slamming their brakes at yellow signals and in some instances you see collisions based on that. Whereas the speed safety system is a completely different enforcement mechanism and it doesn’t create any of those issues on city streets.”
When asked if these issues have limited SF’s use of red light cameras, SFMTA’s Kato said no — the cameras are only placed in locations where upgrades to traffic signals have failed to curtail red-light-related crashes.
There’s also hope that automated speed cameras can help San Francisco reduce not just deaths, but time and money too. Even relatively quick street changes, like new bikeways and bollards, take a while to plan and build. Major street redesigns are years and millions of dollars away, if they can get past objections.
“I think there are a lot of people who prefer to redesign our streets so that they don’t invite speeding,” says Jonathon Kass, a transportation policy manager at the urban planning nonprofit SPUR. But progressive city traffic managers should recognize that redesigns are “not something we can wait for,” he adds.
AB 550, co-authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Phil Ting of San Francisco, as well as East Bay Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, is expected to be reviewed by the Assembly appropriations committee in the coming weeks.
One silver lining of the pandemic is deeper appreciation for the need for safer spaces that we all share. The city is now debating how many “slow streets” (including Golden Gate Park’s main drag), on which through traffic has been temporarily banned, should become permanent. Those are only a handful of streets, though. If approved, the experimental speed cameras could point the way to make a lot more of SF’s streets slower.
