Taxi Driver Kills High School Senior Seana Canavan at Pine and Larkin

Seana Canavan, who would have turned 18 today, was killed by a taxi driver at Pine and Larkin Streets Saturday night at 10:28 p.m., the SF Chronicle reported.

Canavan was a senior at International High School in Hayes Valley. Sammy Walker, who knew Canavan since they were five, told the Chronicle, “Seana wasn’t just unique because of who she was, but because of what she was — a student, daughter, athlete, artist, comedian, feminist, San Franciscan, believer and my best friend.”

The SFPD told the Chronicle that Canavan “stepped in front of a taxi heading westbound on Pine” when she was hit. The taxi driver stayed at the scene.

On the stretch of Pine where Canavan was hit, drivers cruising along a route with synchronized traffic signals pick up speed on a downhill slope. Pine is a three-lane, one-way street. Like most streets that criss-cross the Tenderloin and nearby neighborhoods like Polk Gulch, where the crash occurred, it is designed primarily to whisk car traffic along.

The Department of Public Health has flagged Pine as one of SF’s “high-injury corridors,” the 6 percent of streets and intersections where 60 percent of severe and fatal pedestrian injuries occur.

Canavan is “the third person this year to lose their life to traffic violence while walking,” said Natalie Burdick of Walk SF. “Like Alfred Yee and Bridget Klecker before her, Seana’s fatal collision occurred on one of the city’s high-injury corridors — a sobering reminder of the critical need to prioritize safety improvements and speed projects for the city’s most dangerous streets.”

Klecker, 42, was killed on the night of April 10, when she was hit by three robbers fleeing police in a car speeding down California Street at Kearny Street. The robbers hit a second pedestrian, who survived.

Yee, 87, was killed on March 11 in a crosswalk at Geary Boulevard and 26th Avenue by a driver who reportedly violated his right-of-way while making a left turn. The driver, 40-year-old Daniel Schultz, was arrested for vehicular manslaughter.

The fourth victim of 2015 was killed last night just after 9 p.m. while reportedly walking up a highway 101 offramp at Alemany Boulevard. No information has been reported about the victim or the circumstances of the crash, but we will follow up as details become available.