Commentary: Another Brush with Traffic Violence

I had dinner in North Beach with friends Saturday night. Afterwards, we walked to Montgomery Station. They headed home on Muni rail. I headed for BART.

I had ten minutes until the next train home, so I decided to go back to street level to walk around a little more in a city I love. As I got to the top of the stairs, I saw a black car zoom down Market Street towards the ferry building at maybe 65 mph. I remember cursing under my breath at just another reckless driver endangering the public, speeding down a street they’re not supposed to be on in the first place. But then I saw the car approaching the intersection at 1st in the distance. The light was red. It became clear the driver was not going to stop.

I heard that all-too-familiar bang and sound of crunching metal as the black car slammed into a southbound SUV heading across the intersection.

I ran towards the wreck to see if there was anything I could do to help. But I quickly realized there was a group of police officers already at the scene, presumably leftover from the “No Kings” demonstration a few hours earlier. They were already rendering aid.

There was also a group of cyclists and skateboarders who witnessed the whole incident from a few feet away. One of them remarked how the SUV had lifted into the air from the impact and almost flipped.

I identified myself to one of the officers and asked if anyone was hurt. He said he didn’t think so, which is a testament to how well cars are engineered to protect the occupants. Had the driver hit one of the cyclists or a pedestrian, it would certainly have been deadly. I asked the cop if they needed any more witnesses, but, given how many cops had seen it with their own eyes, that was clearly not necessary.

I asked if they intended to arrest the driver, or at least check them for drugs or alcohol. I didn’t get a reply.

The next day, I emailed SFPD media affairs to find out if an arrest was made. Officer Paulina Henderson emailed me to say she couldn’t find a report about the incident. I asked if that suggests that nobody was arrested. I’ll update this post if she responds.

Since, miraculously, nobody was hurt, I think it’s safe to say that’s probably the case.

And that is what’s so infuriating about our culture when it comes to traffic violence. Think of Mary Fong Lau, the driver who lost control and wiped out a family in West Portal in March of 2024. In my view, the crime is the same as what I saw Saturday evening: driving with a reckless disregard for life. But in the case of Fong Lau, there was enough political pressure because of the resulting tragedy that charges were brought.

I also thought about the absurdity of calling Market Street “car-free” and the completely unnecessary cancellation of the Better Market Street project by former SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin. That would have at least made it less likely that some lunatic driver will one day kill another bicyclist on Market. You can’t design streets that wide without physical separation between cars and cyclists and just hope for the best. The driver Saturday night could have just as easily killed a family, or the group of nearby cyclists, or me if I’d decided to cross the street when I emerged from the train station.

But this is the world of “traffic violence” we’ve built for ourselves. We have cars that are designed to go over 100 mph. We veto any attempt to limit speeds with technology. We design streets to tolerate those speeds. And our law enforcement system won’t do anything to stop egregiously reckless drivers until after they massacre a family. Even drivers who kill, assuming it’s just one person, rarely receive any punishment, even when they’re drunk. Because “sometimes accidents just happen,” cops tell me, even in cases when a driver clearly did something irresponsible or reckless.

What I witnessed Saturday night was no accident. It was the completely predictable result of a broken system and a reckless driver. Somehow I doubt this is the first time they caused a wreck. If they keep driving as they did Saturday evening, eventually they will kill somebody. People will hold a vigil and say “one life lost is too many” and they’ll ask “how can this keep happening?”

San Francisco has objectively failed in its Vision Zero goals. Saturday night, I witnessed, yet again, the system behind that failure.