Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Featured on the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle and ABC 7 is an epic exposé on the lack of legal accountability for drivers who kill pedestrians in the Bay Area. The piece is by Zusha Elinson, a journalist at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Streetsblog readers are all too familiar with the fact that drivers rarely face charges for killing pedestrians if they were sober and stayed on the scene. It’s promising to see so much press attention on a big story that’s remained under the radar of the mainstream media for too long.

Elinson analyzed years of police records from five Bay Area counties, explored the legal and cultural hurdles of penalizing those responsible for pedestrian fatalities, shared personal stories from family members of crash victims, and even delved into the history of motorization in the 1920s:

Pedestrian deaths made up more than a quarter of traffic fatalities over the past decade in the two major metropolitan areas in the Bay Area, according to a 2011 report by national transit advocacy group Transportation for America – outpaced only by New York and Los Angeles. An in-depth Center for Investigative Reporting review of the 434 pedestrians killed from 2007 through 2011 in the five largest Bay Area counties found that, like Joe Molinaro, one-third were walking in a crosswalk when they were struck – three times the national average, according to the group’s report. And in 2011, local fatalities increased almost 40 percent from the previous year.

Yet, more often than not, the drivers responsible faced no serious consequences.

Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges during the five-year period, CIR found in its analysis of thousands of pages of police and court records from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

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A 2007 car crash at 19th Avenue and Sloat killed 21-year-old Sandy Kim of Oakland, who was standing on the corner. Photo: Kim Komenech, SF Chornicle

District 7, one of San Francisco’s most suburban in character, has seen three of this year’s six pedestrian deaths so far. At a hearing yesterday called by D7 Supervisor Norman Yee as his first order of business after taking office in January, residents called upon city agencies to slow drivers on dangerous high-speed streets that cut through neighborhoods like West Portal, Parkside, Sunnyside, and Forest Hill.

The district’s three pedestrian deaths within the last two months each took place on streets known to be dangerous for walking. On February 19, 72-year-old Eileen Barrett was killed by a Muni driver on Lake Merced Boulevard and John Muir Drive. On March 4, Hanren Chang, a 17-year-old Lowell High School student, was run down by an allegedly drunk driver on her birthday on Sloat Boulevard at Forest View Drive in a crosswalk, less than a block from her house. On March 21, 68-year-old Tania Madfes, a retired teacher, was crossing West Portal Avenue at Vicente Street with her husband when a driver ran them down. Madfes died from her injuries a week later.

Supervisor Norman Yee. Photo via Facebook

Most of the district’s pedestrian crashes take place on streets designed for drivers to speed, like Sloat, O’Shaughnessy Boulevard, and 19th Avenue, according to the SF Municipal Transportation Agency. Residents said even in crosswalks where the agency has added treatments like more visible crosswalk markings and signs that instruct drivers to yield to pedestrians, they don’t.

Anyan Cheng, who was a close friend of Chang’s, said she did a one-hour study this week of a pedestrian crossing on Sloat, the speedway where Chang was killed. Even as elderly residents tried to traverse the roadway, she said, “not one car stopped.”

“On Sloat, on 19th Avenue, on Ocean, on Monterey, we need to fix our streets to tame speeds, calm traffic, and prevent more tragedies,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF.

While District 7 carries a generally proportionate share of pedestrian injuries, those injuries are more likely to be fatal, said SFMTA traffic engineer Ricardo Olea. Of the estimated two to three pedestrians injured every day in San Francisco, District 7 sees 8 percent, but 16 percent of the city’s pedestrian fatalities occur there.

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Potrero Avenue looking north at 23rd Street. Image: Google Maps

Four blocks of Potrero Avenue, from 21st to 25th Street at SF General Hospital, could be made safer under proposals from the Department of Public Works to extend sidewalks, narrow the roadway, and plant existing median space. But whether the street’s narrow 9-foot sidewalks will be widened to 15 feet on the east side depends on city officials’ willingness to re-allocate public space from car parking to people.

DPW staff presented street design proposals for Potrero at a public meeting at SF General on Tuesday. The project would add greening and pedestrian safety upgrades to coincide with a street re-paving, sewer replacement work, and a hospital rebuild scheduled for completion in June 2015.

Residents said safety improvements to slow drivers and protect pedestrians on Potrero are sorely needed.

“I always think, when I’m crossing the street, this is the way I’m gonna go,” said Potrero resident Deborah McKnight, who said she gave up her car two years ago. “If there’s a way we can balance, respectfully, the rights of people who feel like they need to be in their cars 24-7, and the rights of people who would like to walk a little bit more and use public transportation, I think we can find it.”

Fran Taylor, a neighborhood pedestrian advocate, pointed out that February 11 was the ten-year anniversary of the death of Elizabeth Dominguez, a four-year old girl who was killed by a Muni maintenance truck driver who jumped the curb when she was waiting with her mother at a Muni stop on Potrero and 24th Street.

“Drivers are not the only people who have the right to get around,” said Taylor. “The sidewalk widening would be very helpful… It’s a lot of people who have crutches, who have helpers walking with them who have to be side-by-side. It’s a hospital,” she said, eliciting broad applause from attendees.

Potrero currently has four traffic lanes, two bike lanes, and a bus-only lane that only runs northbound for just over three blocks between 21st and 25th. Under any of the redesign options, the transit-only lane would be removed, and the outer two traffic lanes widened to 12 feet. DPW project manager Cristina Olea said the existing transit lane, at 10 feet, isn’t wide enough to fit buses on Muni’s 33-Stanyan and 9-San Bruno lines, and that the project wouldn’t preclude any future plans for Bus Rapid Transit on Potrero.

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Image: Google Maps

A driver hit and killed 69-year-old Hector Arana on Wednesday morning at 6:26 a.m. on six-lane San Jose Avenue in the Outer Mission neighborhood. According to reports, the driver was headed northbound in the direction of the nearby 280 freeway, when he hit Arana near the intersection of Liebig Street, where Google Maps shows legal but unmarked crosswalks.

SFPD spokesperson Albie Esparza told SF Weekly, ”The driver was not speeding, there were no drugs or alcohol involved, it was just an unfortunate accident.”

“The police are right that this is tragic, but calling it an accident tends to assume that there’s no fault and that it’s not preventable,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF.

Stampe pointed out that in New York, police have officially dropped the term “accident” as of this week. As the New York Times reported Sunday, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced that police reports will use the term “collision” instead. ”In the past, the term ‘accident’ has sometimes given the inaccurate impression or connotation that there is no fault or liability associated with a specific event,” Kelly wrote in a letter to City Council.

Will SFPD Chief Greg Suhr step up and make a similar policy change?

“It is possible to find fault,” said Stampe, “and it is possible to prevent [crashes].”

When Streetsblog asked how investigators ruled out speed as a factor, Esparza said in an email, “We reconstruct the collision. There is math, science, physics to determine speed, distance, etc.”

Was the driver who killed Arana watching the road? Could his death have been prevented with better enforcement and traffic calming measures on a street designed to be hostile to pedestrians? According to the SFPD, there are no lessons to learn from San Francisco’s fifth pedestrian fatality this year.

“San Jose is, in all but name, a freeway,” said Stampe. “It could really use gateway treatments to communicate to drivers that they have left the freeway and are now in a community where people live and walk, and they need to watch out.”

“We are eagerly awaiting the mayor’s Pedestrian Strategy, which will lay out how the MTA and the police will do what they can to penalize those at fault and prevent more of these tragedies.”

An allegedly drunk driver was arrested for hitting and killing 17-year-old Hanren Chang on Sloat Boulevard near Vale Avenue on Saturday night. According to CBS 5, 29-year-old Keiran Brewer was driving westbound on Sloat at about 11:20 p.m. when he hit Chang, who was crossing the street in the northbound direction, and dragged her “a short distance.” Update: According to ABC 7, Chang was a student at Lowell High School and had just got off a Muni bus on her way home after celebrating her birthday.

Hanren Chang. Photo: ABC 7

Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe said the organization “is saddened to learn of San Francisco’s fourth pedestrian death this past weekend. Hanren Chang was a young girl who lost her life in an awful way, killed and apparently dragged by a car on Sloat Boulevard, one of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets.”

“It’s time for Mayor [Ed] Lee to mobilize city agencies to make our streets safer for everyone, and prevent more needless tragedies,” she added.

Keiran Brewer. Photo via CBS 5

Despite some recent safety improvements, Sloat, a state highway run by Caltrans, remains a deadly speedway dividing the Parkside neighborhood. In January 2012, Caltrans put Sloat on a road diet (converting two of six traffic lanes to buffered bike lanes), upgraded some crosswalks with more visible markings, and lowered the speed limit from 40 mph to 35 mph. However, without further physical traffic calming measures, the lives of residents crossing the street are still at serious risk.

Two pedestrians were injured on Sloat in 2011, and as Streetsblog reported in January 2010, 54-year-old Feng Lian Zhu was killed by a driver on Sloat near Forest View Drive.

“We were encouraged by the recent improvements Caltrans made on Sloat,” said Stampe. “Clearly much more needs to be done, and the city and the state need to work together quickly to add lights and further traffic-calming to fix this deadly road.”

Sloat runs along the border between District 4 and District 7, whose new supervisor, Norman Yee, expects to hold a hearing later this month to review dangerous spots for pedestrians and the status of safety projects. Eileen Barrett was killed by a driver two weeks ago on Lake Merced Boulevard, another high-speed road in Yee’s district.

As of last week, District 4 is represented by newly-appointed Supervisor Katy Tang, who replaced Carmen Chu. On the Board of Supervisors, Chu pushed Caltrans to initiate last year’s safety improvements. Although Tang didn’t initially mention pedestrian safety when asked about her transportation priorities, she followed up with Streetsblog saying she’d like to discuss the issue further. If you have a pedestrian safety question you’d like us to bring to Tang’s attention, let us know in the comments.

Update: Tang told ABC 7 that pedestrian improvements are slated for the intersections of Sloat and Everglade Drive, Forest View Drive, and 23rd Avenue.

A map of pedestrian injuries between 2005 and 2010 using data from the Department Public Health.

The deadly stretch of Sixth Street between Market and Howard Streets in the South of Market District may get some long-overdue pedestrian safety fixes. The SF Municipal Transportation Agency kicked off the first of several community planning meetings on Tuesday for a project that could add pedestrian bulb-outs, marked crosswalks, and other measures that could make for a more livable street.

Sixth Street, designed to speed drivers between the Tenderloin and the 280 highway through a dense SoMa neighborhood, has an alarming rate of traffic violence. According to data from the Department of Public Health, 93 pedestrians were injured by drivers between 2005 and 2010, including five people who were killed.

“Right now, the design of Sixth Street prioritizes fast car travel to the freeway instead of the safety and comfort of the people who live and work here,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “It’s time for that to change.”

On a recent walking tour of the neighborhood organized by the SF Planning and Urban Research Association, D6 Supervisor Jane Kim noted that her district, which sees nearly 30 percent of the city’s pedestrian crashes, “has the most collisions in the entire city.”

“San Francisco has one of the worst vehicle-pedestrian collision rates in the country,” she said. “It’s the worst in the state of California, worse than New York City, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and a lot of major cities. We have some work to do.”

Sixth and Mission Streets. Photo: Aaron Bialick

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The intersection of Lake Merced Boulevard and John Muir Drive, where Eileen Barrett was killed in a crosswalk Saturday. Reports indicate that the Muni driver may have been turning left on to Lake Merced when he or she hit Barrett.

A Muni bus driver ran over and killed Eileen Barrett, a 72-year-old woman from Daly City, in a crosswalk on Lake Merced Boulevard at John Muir Drive this Saturday.

Police say the crash is still being investigated, but according to the San Mateo County Times, “a preliminary investigation revealed the bus’ middle half struck the senior as she walked in a crosswalk.” The Muni driver was reportedly on an outbound run on the 18-46th Avenue line, indicating that he or she may have been turning left from John Muir on to northbound Lake Merced when he or she hit Barrett. The crash occurred just before 4:30 p.m., and although Barrett was originally expected to survive her injuries, she later died at SF General Hospital.

Barrett is the third pedestrian killed in San Francisco this year. In 2012, 19 pedestrians were killed on San Francisco streets.

“This is a tragedy,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF. “So many people walk around Lake Merced, in spite of the surrounding streets feeling more like speedways than walking paths — some even don’t have sidewalks.”

SF Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Paul Rose told the SF Examiner that the bus operator will undergo drug and alcohol testing, as part of standard protocol for Muni crashes. There’s no indication as to whether the SF Police Department may seek charges against the driver or issue a citation.

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