Hands up if you’ve ever been in a San Francisco intersection with a vehicle barreling toward you and have feared for your life. It turns out you’re far from alone.
Every day, on average, three people walking the city’s streets are hit by cars, according to Walk San Francisco, a nonprofit advocacy group.
San Francisco is California’s second deadliest city for pedestrians after Oakland, according to the state Office of Traffic Safety, or OTS. Last year, 15 people were killed while walking in SF, and in the first month of 2019, already two pedestrians have died.
The scope of the problem shocks even those who work to curb it. When Jodie Medeiros learned that workers at a South of Market company had a Slack channel for those who had been hit by a car in the neighborhood, she knew the issue had reached a tipping point.
“This is a public-health epidemic and something we have to be working on collectively as a city.” said Medeiros, executive director of Walk SF.
Calling it an epidemic isn’t an exaggeration. Overall, half of all walker fatalities are seniors, though people 65 and older make up only 15% of the city’s population. In addition, residents that are least likely to own cars are the ones most likely to be injured or killed by them. Hundreds of pedestrians are hurt each year: In 2017, 178 people on foot were severely wounded, according to the city’s Vision Zero data. OTS posts numbers that are even higher because it counts mild and moderate injuries.
With five years left to reach Vision Zero’s goal of eliminating all traffic deaths by 2024, San Francisco is taking a more aggressive approach to pedestrian safety through engineering, enforcement, and education. Now advocates and officials have a champion for their cause in a rather high place at City Hall: Norman Yee, the new president of the Board of Supervisors, who happens to be a survivor of near-fatal traffic violence himself.
Injuries to Norman Yee’s body were profound: a cracked skull, crushed vertebrae, a severed artery. ‘The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive.’
“The attitude is shifting,” Yee said. “Ten years ago, if you were involved in a collision there was a tendency to say ‘Ah, pedestrians. They should look where they’re going,’ and pretty much put the blame on pedestrians instead of drivers.”
Just as the SF Bicycle Coalition and People Protected called for infrastructure improvements on behalf of bike safety, the focus for these groups and officials is on balancing modes of transportation and correcting the street dominance of the almighty automobile left over from the 20th century. “The work we do changes the design of the streets to enforce better behavior,” said Medeiros.
Brush with death
One evening back in 2006, Yee was about a third of the way through an otherwise clear intersection at 4th and Bryant streets in the South of Market when a car careened around a corner and struck him. He hit the windshield and rolled back down off the hood. Fortunately, the driver stopped, but the injuries to Yee’s body were profound: a cracked skull, crushed vertebrae, a severed artery. He drifted in and out of consciousness, but remembers paramedics ripping his clothes to locate and stop the bleeding.
Surgeons rebuilt his neck using two rods to support it; he spent a month in the hospital. “The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive for the impact I took,” Yee said. “It was almost like a miracle that I could still move.”
Yee believes he would have cared about pedestrian safety without having had such intimate contact with the matter, but he noted that it did change his perspective. How could it not?
After visiting New York City for a Vision Zero conference a few years ago, Yee secured city funding for Walk SF to start and manage Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, an advocacy and support group for families who have lost family members and individuals who have been injured in traffic violence.
The group soon found a political voice. “They’ve been very effective in coming to hearings and testifying and coming to rallies,” according to Yee. “It’s a lot better than saying ‘Here are the stats.’ Here’s the face of someone whose mother just got killed.”
Much of such activism targets what epidemiologists have identified as the high-injury network, a map that looks like a bleeding heart of downtown, along with its major arteries. Walk SF does a lot of work in this high-injury corridor — especially the Tenderloin, which has the city’s highest share of school-age children, and SoMa, home to the largest number of seniors, said Medeiros.
Yee voiced support for expanded “daylighting,” which is the practice of removing a parking spot on corners to improve visibility and have safer crossings for pedestrians. He’s considering a policy where all streets would have to be daylighted. Yee might want to go for that, since the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency says daylighting is “not only straightforward and cheap, it’s also been successfully implemented in many other North American cities from Portland to New York City.”
The board president and District 7 supervisor also wants automated speed-enforcement cameras, which he called one of the most effective tools. “We know it’s speed that kills,” Yee said. But using cameras requires state approval, an issue state Assemblymember David Chiu (a former supervisor) has taken up in the past. Then there is Yee’s support for congestion pricing, where vehicles traveling at peak times or in the busiest areas pay fees to do so. The SF County Transportation Authority is studying it, as is Los Angeles. (See this Curbed piece, “Congestion Pricing Is the Only Way to Fix Our Broken Transportation System,” for a deeper dive.)
High and low-tech ideas
Despite San Francisco’s affinity for all things tech, many of the upgrades popping up or being considered are analog. In-road rubber bumpers that prevent drivers from cutting corners, for example, show promise in reducing traffic violence. Bulb-outs — curbs that are extended and rounded out to accommodate more pedestrians — are part of the redesign process, which take buses into account as well, said Medeiros.
“If Muni is not part of this conversation, we’re really not going to get to Vision Zero,” she added. “When you have an improved bus stop, it often includes a bulb-out, which is great for pedestrians. It reduces the crossing length from curb to curb.”
Also on the table: wider sidewalks on Taylor Street and a redesigned Market Street, which is traveled by half a million pedestrians every day. Geofencing allows ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft to offer passenger pickups and drop-offs out of harm’s way.
Last year, a coalition of disability-rights groups and Walk SF scored a major win by securing longer pedestrian crossing times at some traffic lights. For people who use walkers or wheelchairs, a few extra seconds to make it across the street can make a huge difference in lowering their risk of being hit. The city will phase in the new network of increased light times over the next five years. “It adds up to a significant amount of time to make people who might not be as quick and agile as a 25-year-old or even a 45-year-old to be able to cross the street,” said Medeiros.
What’s more, traffic signals in some parts of the city are adding a feature to allow pedestrians to get a head start in the crosswalk so cars can see them better as they step into an intersection, Yee pointed out.
Compounded problems for crash victims
The troubling number of people hurt by cars in the city raises practical health-care questions as well. Public-health messaging all over San Francisco implores people to stay active and “thrive.” If we ask residents to ride a bike or complete 10,000 steps a day for wellness, what do we owe them if they become a victim of traffic violence as they comply with best practices for preventive health? What do we owe anyone who becomes a victim of traffic violence, no matter their lifestyle choices, when faced with bills for trauma services? Is it fair to put them in financial jeopardy when they are most vulnerable?
If we ask residents to ride a bike or complete 10,000 steps a day for wellness, what do we owe them if they become a victim of traffic violence?
A recent viral story on Vox revealed that Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital does not contract with any private insurers, meaning residents taken there after a crash are on the hook for huge bills as they recover, unless they happen to have Medi-Cal, the state’s name for Medicaid. SF General has long been the safety net provider for the poor, but when it comes to trauma, it serves everyone who needs it within a geographical range.
Yee wasn’t surprised to read about the dire financial straits of some trauma patients. He remembered his own $600,000 in charges when he was released a dozen years ago. He had a private health-insurance plan at the time and hired a lawyer to handle the claims. “You get hit by a car, then you get hit by this massive bill,” he said. “The insurance tries to play games.”
Fast-forward to 2019: Yee said the Board of Supervisors was looking into the SF General matter.
UPDATE: Just as this article was published, news broke that city leaders were halting onerous billing practices for privately insured trauma and emergency patients, and would take 90 days to come up with a reform plan.
What you can do
Are you interested in doing your part to make San Francisco a safer place to walk, bike, ride transit, or scoot around?
- Get to know the lingo for safety design elements and traffic-calming features.
- Come out and walk with Walk SF.
- See what the SF Bicycle Coalition is up to, and check out this cool map of green lanes.
- Reach out to your district supervisor. Attend and speak out at an SFMTA meeting or a Board of Supervisors meeting.
- While you’re at it, follow The Frisc and subscribe to our newsletter.
Kristen Gerencher is an award-winning journalist and an occupational therapist.
Note: This story has been corrected. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority, not the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, is studying congestion pricing.
