Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: Sally Khim

Criminal charges may be brought against the taxi driver who killed pedestrian Edmund Cappalla on August 11 at Eddy and Larkin Streets, according to Denis O’Leary, head of the SFPD Traffic Company. SFPD investigators reportedly submitted the case to the District Attorney’s office last Wednesday.

While it’s not known which charges the DA could file, O’Leary said in an e-mail that the SFPD “will not charge the driver with the infractions of running a red light or failing to yield to a pedestrian as those are lesser included offenses of the charge of vehicular manslaughter and citing the driver for those infractions would compromise a future prosecution.”

A request for comment from the DA’s office was not returned as of press time.

“Walk SF and its members are very pleased to see the fast response from the police and certainly look forward to equally swift action from the District Attorney,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe in response to the SFPD statements. “It’s important to make clear that it’s not OK to run a red light and kill a person on San Francisco streets.”

O’Leary said investigators confirmed reports that the driver of the taxi van ran a red light while traveling east on Eddy, when he was hit by another driver traveling north on Larkin (through a green light), causing the taxi to spin and strike Cappalla in a crosswalk along Larkin.

“There were at least ten witnesses who remained at the scene. A video of part of the collision was found at a nearby surveillance camera and was seized as evidence,” O’Leary said. ”The van was impounded. There was no indication of intoxication on the part of the van’s driver.”

O’Leary also noted that officers from the Traffic Company and the local Northern Station “will increase their vigilance in protecting pedestrians in the neighborhood of Eddy and Larkin Streets.” O’Leary said he couldn’t provide the taxi driver’s name “as doing so could compromise the investigation and jeopardize the prosecution.”

Photos: Sally Khim

Police are still looking into whether charges could be filed against the taxi driver who allegedly ran a red light at Eddy and Larkin Streets Saturday, causing a car crash that killed pedestrian Edmund Capalla, the SF Examiner reports. The driver has reportedly yet to be arrested or cited.

“We have to see if he was negligent,” SFPD spokesperson Albie Esparza told the Examiner. “He may have had a medical emergency, I don’t know.” Esparza called the crash a “heartbreaking accident,” adding that it “could have been prevented if laws had been obeyed.”

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe said “the police should be telling us what actually happened, not speculating on excuses for the driver.”

“We know there was a medical emergency: Edmund Capalla was hit and killed while walking,” she said. “We expect solid information from the police about how this occurred. Walk SF and its members want to see swift action on this case from the police and, if appropriate, from the District Attorney’s office.”

Christina Siadat and Sally Khim were at a store on Larkin when they heard the crash. “We ran outside and saw the red car on the pole,” Siadat told Streetsblog. “We walked around the corner and there was the man lying face down with shattered glass.”

Siadat said a clerk at a corner store confirmed reports that the taxi driver ran a red light when the driver of the red car, who had a green light, hit the taxi, causing it to slam into Capalla, who was crossing the street. “The clerk said that the cab driver was sitting on the curb with his head in his hands,” she said.

The crash occurred just before 7 p.m., during daylight hours. Capalla, who died at San Francisco General Hospital, was the eleventh known pedestrian killed in the city this year.

The driver of the red car, who reportedly entered the intersection with a green light, hit the taxi before running into a pole. Siadat said she and Khim didn't notice the taxi at the time.

No charges were filed in the death of Lourdes Richman, 71, in a crosswalk at Townsend and Second Streets. Photo: Greg Janess

Updated 8 p.m.

As Streetsblog has reported, when a sober automobile driver strikes and kills a pedestrian in San Francisco and stays at the scene, charges are rarely filed. While evidence suggests motorists’ failure to yield is responsible for a plurality of pedestrian injuries in the city, new information furnished by the SF District Attorney’s office shows that few drivers who kill face charges unless they are drunk or flee the scene.

According to the DA’s office, of the 17 pedestrian deaths in 2011, 10 were presented by SFPD to the DA for investigation. Of those 10, the DA filed charges in seven cases.

Here is the list of people charged provided by the DA’s office:

• Jose Jimenez, a drunk driver who fled after killing James Hudson on Masonic Avenue
• Wallace Loggins, a Muni driver who killed Emily Dunn in the Castro
• Updated: Juan Martinez, a driver who fled after killing Eddy Mendez on a traffic island at Potrero and Cesar Chavez
• Randolph Ang, a bicycle rider who killed Dionette Cherney on the Embarcadero
• Gregg Wilcox, a driver who killed William Cox at 14th and Noe Streets while wearing a cast
• Updated: Terry Chan, a driver who killed Helen Tam — more info not immediately available
• Updated: En Lin – currently in federal prison, but ”arrest warrant prepared” for killing Aurora Venida at Geary and Arguello

Of the cases we know about, the only drivers who were sober and stayed at the scene are En Lin, who killed Aurora Venida in a crosswalk at Geary Arguello Boulevards; Gregg Wilcox, who was wearing a cast on his leg while driving; and Wallace Loggins, a Muni driver. It’s also worth noting that the DA charged Wallace Richardson, a UCSF shuttle driver who killed Professor Kevin Mack, his passenger, when he crashed into a big rig when running a red light at Octavia Boulevard and Oak Street.

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A pedestrian injured by two drivers at 19th and Valencia Streets last month, one of the more than 800 hit every year in San Francisco -- the vast majority by drivers. Photo: Mission Local

SF District Attorney George Gascón is set to bring felony vehicular manslaughter charges against Chris Bucchere later today for biking into 71-year-old Sutchi Hui in a crosswalk at Castro and Market Streets, killing him. Any traffic death on our streets deserves a thorough investigation with appropriate charges filed against the responsible party. But this high-profile case raises the question of why so few other perpetrators of traffic violence face similar repercussions.

So far, six other pedestrians are known to have been killed in San Francisco this year. SFPD and the DA have not drawn nearly the same level of public scrutiny to those cases as they have to the Bucchere/Hui case. The media, meanwhile, is captivated. The most visible difference setting Bucchere’s case apart, of course, is that he was riding a bike when he killed Hui, while the people who killed the six other victims were driving motor vehicles.

SFPD Chief Greg Suhr (right) and SF District Attorney George Gascón. Photo: ABC News

All pedestrians who are injured on SF streets (876 in 2011) and the survivors of those who are killed (17 victims last year) deserve thorough investigations and appropriate actions from law enforcement agencies to deter dangerous behavior, regardless of the mode of travel of the perpetrator. But the DA and SFPD don’t display the same zeal for prosecuting drivers who kill (save those who are drunk or flee the scene) as they have for Bucchere.

Gascón and the SFPD have improved their record in recent months by charging a few such drivers in 2011 cases — but with misdemeanors, not felonies. Spokesperson Stephanie Ong Stillman argues that the DA’s office has given fair attention to cases that the SFPD has brought before it.

However, the SFPD apparently doesn’t treat all traffic fatalities equally, even in cases where police investigators determine the driver to be at fault. So far, there has been no action against the drivers responsible for the deaths of 47-year-old Sena Putra and 22-year-old Robert Yegge — both of whom were killed within the last month by truck drivers whom the SFPD says failed to yield. The evidence that the drivers who killed Putra and Yegge violated the law seems comparable, if not stronger, than the evidence in the Bucchere case, yet there is no word that the department will seek charges. (Streetsblog has requested a list of pedestrian fatalities presented by the SFPD to the DA’s office for investigation this year. DA staff said it is compiling the list, but we have not received it as we go to press.)

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Tracking, analyzing, and reporting pedestrian fatalities should be a basic function of the San Francisco Police Department. But the fact is that SF lacks public access to clear and accurate data about street safety. The information gap is deeply troubling, and city agencies must act quickly to rectify it.

Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr

In April, Streetsblog reported a discrepancy in the number of 2011 pedestrian fatalities reported by the SFPD. A department spokesperson had told Streetsblog the total was 13, but another officer who reviewed the data said it was actually 17. The spokesperson, Albie Esparza, said the initial undercount came from the SFPD’s hit-and-run unit, while the higher, more accurate number, provided by officer Linda Chen, apparently came from a more comprehensive list.

When asked about discrepancy, Esparza said the other four fatalities must have been bicyclists, not pedestrians. But when we checked that with Chen, she confirmed her numbers: 17 pedestrians killed, three bicyclists, and eight car drivers or passengers, for a total of 28 people killed in traffic crashes in 2011.

Asked about the possible cause for the error, Al Casciato, the retiring head of the SFPD’s Traffic Company, said the hit-and-run unit’s data may not always be up to date. Certain cases, he explained, like a pedestrian killed by a Muni train, or a victim who dies from his or her injuries months after a crash, may not be added to the unit’s report for some time.

Overall, the state of public data on street safety in SF is poor, and as a result, it can be exceedingly difficult just to ascertain, for example, whether traffic injuries are rising or falling. In New York City, annual reports on the volume of traffic injuries and deaths are compiled by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, and a recent law compelled the police department to release monthly updates on traffic violence. The system isn’t perfect — NYPD has so far managed to avoid releasing their data in an open format — but in SF, no such report is available until several years later.

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Photo: Sean Rea

Police officers have been targeting bicycle riders in recent weeks at the intersection of Octavia and Grove Streets and issuing tickets for “running” the stop sign, according to two Streetsblog readers.

The quiet intersection isn’t known for being particularly dangerous, and there aren’t any known injuries there involving bicycles recently.

But Streetsblog reader Sean Rea said an officer told him they had been assigned to ticket bicyclists there in response to a neighbor complaint and because it’s a “blind corner,” though they seemed unhappy with the duty.

“They were very friendly, and seemed more interested in doing it where it might matter vs. being out there because someone called in the intersection,” Rea wrote in a comment. “I got a strong sense that this isn’t what they wanted to be doing.”

There are certainly more dangerous intersections where the enforcement might be more effective in reducing crashes. Just a few blocks away at Oak and Franklin Streets this week, a truck driver killed USF student Robert Yegge on his bicycle.

Despite the ongoing lack of noticeable enforcement at many of the city’s most dangerous spots, Rea said SFPD’s targeting of bicyclists at Octavia and Grove appears to have even stepped up since he first saw an officer perched there on Bike to Work Day. Today, he said he saw a second officer for the first time.

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Bayshore and Alemany Boulevards, next to a Highway 101 onramp. High-speed motor vehicles on streets like these still pose the greatest threat to pedestrians by far. Photo: Aaron Bialick

In the midst of a wave of media attention around the recent bicycle-pedestrian death in the Castro, walking and bicycling advocates today re-affirmed the greatest dangers facing pedestrians on San Francisco’s streets: high-speed roads and dangerous driving behavior.

In a KQED radio forum this morning, Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe, SF Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum, SF Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair Bert Hill, and Captain Al Casciato of the SFPD Traffic Company all seemed to agree that the recent death of Sutchi Hui was as tragic as any, and that safer streets will require better street engineering as well as more effective enforcement and education efforts to elicit more courteous behavior among people using all modes of transport.

Still, there’s no question, they said: The vast majority of the more than 800 pedestrian injuries or deaths on San Francisco’s streets every year involve motorists and occur disproportionately on high-speed “arterial” streets.

“In a way, this is kind of a man-bites-dog story,” Stampe said of the bike-ped crash — an event receiving an unusual amount of attention precisely because it happens so infrequently, while too-common car-pedestrian crashes go vastly under-reported. ”This is a real tragedy,” Stampe continued. “I don’t think anybody disagrees, a lot of people are upset, and it’s not okay for people to be hit in a crosswalk and killed in San Francisco. But the fact remains that three people a day are hit by cars… and that’s an underestimate.”

In fact, four other pedestrians have been killed this year alone, according to the SFPD, two of them in the same week as the bike-pedestrian fatality. The death of one still-unidentified victim killed by a Muni bus driver also made national headlines, but the other three victims killed by auto drivers, including 45-year-old Tom Ferguson (killed on the same day as the bus victim), received little more than a few blurbs in the media.

As the SF Bay Guardian pointed out, from 2000 to 2009, 220 pedestrians were killed in San Francisco, mostly by car drivers who rarely face criminal charges. None of those deaths are known to have involved bicycles. Media attention, however, seems to have focused on the two fatal bicycle crashes that occurred within the last year, and their reports rarely provide the statistics about traffic deaths in San Francisco. (Some of the more dramatic cases, like the Concord driver who ran over a family biking on the sidewalk this weekend, killing two, tend to garner more media attention.)

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Standing on the corner of Castro and Market yesterday afternoon, CBS 5 reporter Ken Bastida relayed to the camera a sad tale of the dangers of walking in San Francisco.

Ken Bastida, newfound pedestrian safety advocate. Image via CBS 5

“We’re about to do something here that really could be taking your life into your hands,” Bastida said before entering a crosswalk.

He’s not kidding: Two or three people are injured on the city’s streets every day, statistically speaking. And Bastida, being the hands-on newscaster he is, was in the field to get to the root of this “growing problem for pedestrians,” as CBS 5 put it.

“We talked to a lot of the people who live in the neighborhood. It’s not just this neighborhood,” Bastida said before cutting to an interview with a man on the street. I was glad to hear him acknowledge this — a pedestrian was injured around the corner from my home in the Inner Sunset that evening.

This issue needs more scrutiny from the media. After all, 800 pedestrian injures are reportedly hit every year, and 13 people were killed last year — the vast majority by cars.

Except Bastida wasn’t there to talk about cars. CBS sent the journo-turned-pedestrian-advocate out there to talk about bikes.

That’s because a bicycle rider hit an elderly man at that intersection yesterday morning, and both were hospitalized. “Witnesses say a bicyclist came barreling down the street, right down Castro, through the red light, and struck him,” Bastida said. Fortunately, both parties seem to be making a recovery today.

There’s no excuse for colliding with a pedestrian in a crosswalk, no matter what your mode of travel. But there’s also no excusing the double standard apparent in the media’s obsession with bike crashes, while traffic injuries caused by motorists go vastly under-reported.

Like Bastida, many local media outlets took up the cause of pedestrian safety after yesterday’s crash. The story even held one of SFGate‘s three photo-feature slots for hours on its front page.

Yet, despite the abundance of pedestrian injuries caused by drivers, reporters like Bastida don’t seem as quick to cover them.

As I wrote earlier this week, the media generally tends to jump all over relatively rare pedestrian crashes with bicyclists and Muni drivers while overlooking the far bigger risk posed by private motorists. (There was one very welcome exception in the Chronicle yesterday: Columnist and former pedestrian-victim-blamer C.W. Nevius conceded that when you look at the numbers for pedestrian injuries, “It is pretty hard to escape the conclusion – it’s the drivers’ fault.”)

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