Streetsblog San Francisco

In the first three months of 2013, six pedestrians have been killed on San Francisco streets. At that rate, the city is on course for pedestrian deaths to rise for the third year in a row.

The trend is striking: Since 2010, when 14 pedestrians were killed on San Francisco streets, more have died each year since. There were 17 deaths reported in 2011, and at least 19 deaths in 2012. (The Examiner reports that police data shows 20 deaths that year, and five this year. By our count, it appears one of those deaths may have been mistakenly counted in 2012. We’ve reported on six deaths this year, with the first occurring on the morning of New Year’s Day.)

From 2000 to 2008, pedestrian fatalities were on a downward trajectory: 2000 saw 32 pedestrian deaths, and 2008 saw 13, the lowest number within the period. The rate of pedestrian deaths in the first three months of 2013 is nearly twice as high as the rate in 2008.

Mayor Ed Lee’s office says the city’s final version of the Pedestrian Strategy, which will include a plan to fund the pedestrian safety improvements that are needed, is expected to be released this week, KTVU reported today.

“We know how to fix these streets,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director of Walk SF. “Delay here means tragedy.”

The latest victim is Tania Madfes, a retired teacher who died in the hospital last Wednesday after she and her husband were run down by a driver in a crosswalk at West Portal Avenue and Vicente Street. The SF Chronicle reports:

A San Francisco woman who devoted her career to encouraging girls to pursue opportunities that had been denied to her has died after she was struck by a car while crossing a street in the West Portal neighborhood with her husband.

Tania Madfes, 68, and her husband, David Madfes, were returning home March 21 from an evening at the Berkeley Repertory Theater and were walking across Vicente Street at West Portal Avenue when a car struck them at 9:40 p.m.

“We were crossing Vicente and – I can’t reconstruct in my head what happened – next thing I knew this car was there,” David Madfes said Thursday. “It hit my leg just as it came to a stop, and I fell and my wife was lying on the street on her back.”

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Two pedestrians and one vehicle passenger lost their lives in separate car crashes in the last two weeks, marking the last of 19 pedestrian deaths in 2012, and the first two traffic fatalities of 2013.

Yesterday at approximately 8 a.m., 19-year-old driver David Morales of San Francisco was fleeing from police when he crashed into a car at South Van Ness Avenue and 21st Streets, killing an unidentified woman in the car and causing it to slam into a corner store and kill 26-year-old Francisco Gutierrez as he was walking in, according to SFPD spokesperson Gordon Shyy. The driver of the car that was hit was also hospitalized with life threatening injuries, but has since been upgraded to critical condition.

Morales, who was arrested at the scene of the crash (captured in a video here), allegedly fled a traffic stop after police received calls about a shooting at the Valencia Gardens housing complex at 14th and Guererro Streets, according to the SFPD. Morales was charged with two counts of murder for the fatalities caused by the crash, as well as multiple other charges in relation to the shooting.

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A man his 40s was killed by a pickup truck driver in a crosswalk at Market and Beale Streets yesterday at about 2:30 p.m, as reported by ABC 7. Police say they’re investigating the crash to determine whether the driver will be cited or charged. The victim has not been identified yet by police.

The story is all too common in San Francisco — the victim is the 18th pedestrian killed this year so far, surpassing last year’s 17, and 14 in 2010.

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency expects to finalize its Pedestrian Action Plan in January, though it was originally expected by late summer, to reduce pedestrian crashes and injuries with targeted street improvements, education and enforcement efforts. The plan is intended to reduce pedestrian injuries by 25 percent by 2016, and 50 percent by 2020, as set out in former Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Directive on Pedestrian Safety.

“We want to see a plan that will actually meet the goals that the mayor set out to reduce injuries, reduce inequities in pedestrian safety, and increase walking,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “Having clear metrics and timelines in the plan is critical.”

Ambitious pedestrian safety plans have recently been adopted in Chicago and New York City, which set out to re-engineer 60 miles of streets each year, including 20 miles of “intensive safety redesign.” Chicago, which sees an average of 50 pedestrian deaths per year, aims to bring that number down to zero by 2022.

Stampe, who sits on the task force for San Francisco’s developing plan, said the draft plan does lay out mileage targets, but that its goals are somewhat muddled in technical language that could be made clearer to the public. Some community groups who have reviewed the draft plan have complained that it’s difficult to understand, she said.

“I think if it’s unclear what it it’s saying it will do, then it’s hard to have accountability,” said Stampe. “It’s really important to have something that clearly states exactly what the city will do when, and why, and how that will meet the goals.”

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For a district attorney who wants to save lives on the streets, using data to target the most dangerous traffic behaviors should be a no-brainer.

But the new traffic safety ad campaign announced today by San Francisco DA George Gascón seems to use little application of crash data collected by his own former police department. The three versions of the ad, which feature the tagline “What’s the Rush?,” list fines for respective traffic violations and plead, “Let’s all work together to make our streets safe.”

It’s encouraging that the DA is bringing attention to the need for safer streets: As a press release from his office noted, “Among California cities, San Francisco has historically had the highest per capita vehicle-pedestrian injury collision rate.” In 2011, 28 people were killed on San Francisco streets: 17 pedestrians, three bicyclists, and eight people in motor vehicles.

But not only do but the ads fail to target the most common causes of injuries and deaths on San Francisco streets — by seeming to equate plowing through pedestrians in a crosswalk with crossing against a light on bike or foot, they downplay the disproportionately greater risk inherent in driving a motor vehicle.

Rather than emphasize fines, a more effective approach for the campaign might be to list the number of people injured or killed by such violations each year. Fortunately, that data is summarized in the SF Municipal Transportation Agency’s 2010-2011 Traffic Collision Report [PDF], the most recent one available.

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The SF District Attorney’s office has put charges on hold against the driver who killed pedestrian Francisco Huarcha-Salanic, 31, on Bayshore Boulevard on the dangerous junction with Highway 101 known as the “Hairball.”

The driver, 25-year-old Caitlin Rea, was arrested for driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter after hitting and killing Huarcha-Salanic at 12:40 a.m. on September 21, according to SFPD spokesperson Michael Andraychak. The crash occurred about 60 feet south of the point where several ramps merge together onto southbound Bayshore from eastbound Cesar Chavez Street and southbound Potrero Avenue.

However, as Bay City News reported on SF Appeal today, prosecutors “discharged” the case on September 28, pending further investigation. ”Once further investigation has been completed, we will charge the case accordingly,” DA spokesperson Alex Bastian told Streetsblog. (Note: SF Appeal’s headline had originally stated that the DA wouldn’t charge the driver, but it was later corrected to reflect that the charges were only put on hold.) Bastian said he couldn’t comment on the investigation.

While we don’t know why Huarcha-Salanic was crossing the road in the area, the Hairball is widely considered one of the city’s most dangerous and difficult areas for pedestrians to traverse. Crossing it from Bayshore requires pedestrians to make an extensive detour, and the crosswalks that do exist provide far from any guarantee of safety. The distance between the two nearest crosswalks on Bayshore, located at Cesar Chavez and Oakdale Avenue, is roughly half a mile, judging by Google Maps.

The Planning Department’s Cesar Chavez East Community Design Plan, released in February, is intended as a guide for a long-term re-envisioning of the Hairball and the eastern section of Cesar Chavez, but it doesn’t recommend adding any pedestrian crossings on Bayshore.

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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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.

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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It’s a common sight in downtown San Francisco: drivers line up on a bustling street, waiting to make a turn, and one or two impatient motorists can’t seem to believe that pedestrians are crossing in front of the queue.

When the queue moves, if that driver reaches the crosswalk and then runs over a pedestrian, should he or she be able to escape the consequences of committing what is effectively assault, so long as they claim not to have seen the victim?

In the case of the paratransit van driver who ran over a man at Eddy and Leavenworth Streets in the Tenderloin this Valentine’s Day, the “I didn’t see him excuse” worked like a charm. Surveillance footage and eyewitness accounts make it plain that the driver honked impatiently then ran down the victim in a marked crosswalk, yet the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office says no criminal charges can be brought against him because he stayed at the scene and “cooperated” with police, the victim didn’t die, and law enforcement determined that he was not driving “recklessly.”

Charges of reckless driving, according to DA spokesperson Omid Talai, only apply when the driver is “in willful and wanton disregard for the safety of other people.” In this case, the victim was hospitalized and will likely suffer life-long consequences, but without a reckless driving charge, the only consequence for the perpetrator will be a single traffic citation for failing to yield — and even that ticket probably wouldn’t have happened if not for a show of outrage from pedestrian safety advocates.

If San Francisco expects to have streets where people are safe to walk without suffering debilitating injuries, then the DA should consider this driver’s actions to be reckless. It’s clear that the driver was impatient and careless enough to barrel through the intersection as though no one were nearby, even though he was behind the wheel of a multi-ton motor vehicle in a crowded downtown neighborhood that sees as much or more pedestrian crashes as any other in the city.

The walk signal was on, the sun was out, the crosswalk was marked with an especially visible design, and the victim was crossing for several seconds before the driver accelerated. The fact that he didn’t see the victim is a result of his willful recklessness, not a test to determine whether recklessness occurred.

If someone can inflict serious injuries on another person by recklessly operating a lethal machine, and get right back behind the wheel without so much as a suspended driver’s license, then our legal system is broken.