Less than three months into 2024 — the year San Francisco was supposed to eliminate traffic deaths — cars have already killed 11 people on city streets, including a family last weekend, waiting at a bus stop when a driver crashed into them. The parents, their 1-year-old, and their infant died.
[Update, 3/21/24: This story has been changed to note the death of the family’s infant son.]
The deaths brutally underscored how safety improvements, introduced over the last 10 years, have failed to reduce the number of people killed on SF’s roads.
This week, as the city mourns, there is also hope that new rules will start to turn the tide. In October, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a state bill allowing San Francisco and five other California cities to deploy speed cameras in a five-year pilot program. In a hearing Tuesday city officials discussed where 33 of these cameras — which snap a picture when a vehicle drives 11 mph or more above the speed limit — might go.
The focus is on SF’s most dangerous streets, known as the high-injury network, and near places like schools and senior residences where drivers are supposed to drive slowly. The highest concentration of cameras are proposed for South of Market and the Excelsior, but every supervisorial district will get at least two.
In a dramatic moment during yesterday’s hearing, the father of an SF educator killed in 2021 spoke in support of the cameras, his voice cracking with emotion. “Speeding is deadly,” said Richard Zieman.
His son Andrew was pinned to the wall of his elementary school after a car ran a red light and was T-boned by another car speeding down Franklin Street.
Traffic fatalities have reached all-time highs nationally and locally. In San Francisco, 2022 was the worst on record since the 2014 Vision Zero pledge, with 31 fatalities.
Studies show that speed cameras can be effective deterrents, but until the recent state bill, they’ve been illegal in California. There are other tools to use as well. California gave cities the flexibility to lower speed limits in 2021, particularly along high-injury corridors, and SF has taken advantage of this, most notably in the Tenderloin.
The speed-camera program has several conditions to address privacy and equity concerns. For instance, the cameras cannot use facial recognition technology. They take pictures only of license plates.
The number of cameras per city is based on population and must be placed based on several criteria. The cameras will remain in place for 18 months, at which point they must prove effective — showing at least a 25 percent decrease in speeding violations, in another nod to civil liberty protections. If they don’t meet that measure, SFMTA would have to take other steps, such as physical road changes, to justify keeping the cameras at those sites.
SFMTA staff think speed cameras can help, particularly along streets like South Van Ness, where there was a fatality last year despite several traffic-calming measures. “We did all the things but people can still drive fast,” said SFMTA traffic engineer Ricardo Olea.
Pedestrians bear the brunt
At SFMTA’s Vision Zero Task Force meeting last month — only its second, despite the pledge being nearly 10 years old — agency staff showed how most collisions on SF streets last year were the result of excessive speed. Pedestrians, who made up the majority of traffic fatalities last year, were most often struck by cars that failed to yield.
A widely cited Automobile Association of America study also shows that a person struck by a vehicle going 25 mph or slower has a less than 25 percent chance of severe injury or death. Those odds rise to 75 percent of severe injury or death when a car is traveling 40 mph or more.
“We are 100 percent committed to doing our part to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries on our streets,” SFMTA board chair Amanda Eaken told The Frisc via email. She acknowledged that the agency can’t restrict vehicle size — another factor in the rise of fatalities — but it can advocate for state and federal regulations such as “speed governor” technology that prevents vehicles from speeding.
Advocates say a menu of changes, not just speed cameras, must happen to save lives. KidSafe SF organizer Robin Pam cites multiple causes for SF’s grim record: bigger cars, roads designed to move cars quickly, no accountability for unsafe driving, and crowded public spaces right next to traffic. “The cities that have achieved Vision Zero use multiple overlapping interventions to get there, as any one action on its own will never be enough to bend the curve,” Pam tells The Frisc.
It’s like every time you cross the street, you might die.
SF resident Greg Gaar, 75, at the March 18 vigil for a family killed by a wrong-way driver
SFMTA officials are aware of the urgency. At the February Vision Zero meeting, staffers presented an all-of-the-above approach to street safety, including more 20 mph zones and an expansion of the “no right on red” ban beyond the Tenderloin to the Financial District, North Beach, and SoM
The agency will also install safety treatments for the remaining third of the high-injury network. But budget constraints will limit these improvements to flimsy plastic posts, bollards, and paint.
Some advocates are tired of waiting and have taken matters into their own hands.
Rebels with drills
Speed cameras have a track record of slowing traffic, and so do “road diets” — taking away a lane or two from a busy street.
Last September — nearly two years after Andrew Zieman’s death — SFMTA said it planned to give Franklin Street the diet treatment along the stretch where Zieman was killed. Three months later, SFMTA spokesperson Michael Roccaforte told The Frisc to expect “recommended next steps” soon.
Last week, with no sign of those steps in sight, guerilla group Safe Street Rebel drilled holes in the Franklin Street pavement, installed pylons, and created their own road diet on one block next to Zieman’s school, all while holding a rally to demand action. (SFMTA uninstalled the group’s work within a few hours.)
A similar rally — without the guerilla infrastructure work — took place in February at Fulton Street and Arguello Boulevard, where a 63-year-old man on foot was killed by a car before dawn on Jan. 31. Ruth Malone held up a sign reading “Bus = vision zero; car = death” and walked deliberately across each crosswalk to slow drivers making right turns. “We shouldn’t have to hold all of these vigils,” Malone said. “We should be at Vision Zero already.”
Prior to the man’s death, SFMTA had added no-turn-on-red and left turn restrictions to the intersection, but according to the SFMTA’s Traffic Fatality Notification Table, it’ll take at least a year to add a bulb-out on the northwest corner to shorten the crossing for pedestrians. All the while, upgrades along Arguello — promised after a biker’s death in the Presidio last spring — have stalled.
A somber gathering
The site of the West Portal tragedy became the site of a city vigil Monday evening. The area in front of the West Portal library was packed with friends of the victims, and top city officials including Mayor London Breed, SFPD Chief Bill Scott, and SFMTA executive director Jeffrey Tumlin paid their respects. Mourners laid flowers, messages, and stuffed animals in tribute to Matilde Ramos Pinto, Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, and their toddler and infant, who were killed just feet away.
The SUV driver, a 78-year-old SF woman, was hospitalized and in police custody under suspicion of several counts including felony vehicular manslaughter. As of this writing, however, she has not been charged and is no longer in custody, according to the Chronicle.
There were no formal services or remarks at the vigil, just the sounds of a keyboardist playing “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Amazing Grace,” along with sobs and whispers of condolence. “It’s like every time you cross the street, you might die,” said lifelong SF resident Greg Gaar, 75.
WalkSF executive director Jodie Medeiros, a pedestrian safety advocate, acknowledged that the speed camera pilot program won’t touch this West Portal intersection since it’s not part of the high-injury network: “There’s just a sense that this can happen anywhere.”