Danielle Jezienicki almost lost her six-year-old son, Bowie, last October. At 7th and Balboa, a block from Frank McCoppin Elementary School, a driver crashed into Jersienicki's husband while he was riding their son home from school on the back of his bike.
Jezienicki said as her husband Nick and child crossed, the driver of a Prius stopped. But then, as Nick slowed to make sure the second lane was clear, the motorist gunned it and ran into them. "The driver said she didn't see them because the sun was in her eyes."
Bowie was wearing a helmet, but nevertheless sustained damage to his brain stem and lost consciousness. The young boy ended up spending a week in the hospital. He eventually recovered, but It took six months before he could resume normal activities.
The stretch of Balboa from 2nd to 10th Avenue is on the city's high injury network. And Jezienicki and other parent-advocates in the area are fed up with SFMTA's lackluster efforts to make the street, especially the area around the school, safe. Jen Nossokoff, parent of another McCoppin student, is leading an effort to get the city to do better. Nosokoff and Jezienicki want the SFMTA to start by following state protocols under AB 413, which became law in 2023, and painting 20 foot no-parking zones, also known as "daylighting," to improve visibility at 7th and Balboa and throughout the neighborhood.
So far, they are dismayed at the responses they're getting from SFMTA.
"Despite simple and clear direction from both state law and repeated Board of Supervisors’ resolutions prioritizing safety over parking, SFMTA continued painting curbs at just 10 feet, including in school zones and on high-injury streets," wrote Nosokoff in a statement. "When parents and advocates raised concerns, the City’s Traffic Engineer initially acknowledged the mistake, but then reversed course, highlighting how easily safety can be neglected without transparency and oversight."
As previously reported, SFMTA seems to spend resources making parts of Balboa less safe—such as by shortening bus stop no-parking zones to provide additional parking. The city seems to be doing the same thing with the "daylighting" no-parking zones at the intersections, including at the one where Jezienicki's son was nearly killed.
As referenced above, Nosokoff was especially disturbed by an email from Ricardo Olea, head of Transportation Engineering at SFMTA, in May of 2025:
On the general daylighting lengths, since 2019 the SFMTA has been painting daylighting zones at 20 feet with the exception that STOP sign approaches have been daylighted at 10 feet. This is because in those situations vehicles
are travelling at a slower speed and have to check for cross traffic at the intersection. At other locations without a stop sign, vehicles may be travelling at speeds well above 25 mph as they approach the crosswalk, thus the 20 foot or more of daylighting in those cases. The 20 feet in AB 413 was a blanket average value that was chosen to apply by default statewide in all situations, but in practice some zones should be longer and some limited situations like certain STOP signs the daylighting can be shorter and still safe. The school my girls attended were daylighted at 10 feet for many
years on the STOP sign approaches and it worked fine
Strictly speaking, AB 413 does allow daylighting distances to be changed if "a local authority has marked the different distance at the intersection using paint or a sign."
But according to Viktoriya Wise, SFMTA's Director of Streets. "... it is the policy of the SFMTA that all school zone daylighting approaches be painted at 20 feet, and we have requested our Paint Shop to paint the approaches surrounding McCoppin Elementary to 20 feet," she wrote in an email to Nosokoff.
Wise added that a crew was out painting curbs red around the school on Tuesday afternoon. Streetsblog did not see any crews. It's also unclear why SFMTA would ever want to paint curbs shorter than the state standard of 20 feet. But as one official inside city hall opined and years of reporting on this topic show, it's always, ultimately, been about preserving parking.
In Streetsblog's view, whatever the motivation, it's yet another example of a city that talks about Vision Zero but always compromises on safety. McCoppin isn't even the only elementary school where the city has failed to make things safe. Think of Sherman Elementary on the corner of Union and Franklin Street, where the city reneged on a promised lane reduction even after a speeding driver killed a teacher.
Meanwhile, Jezienicki said she doesn't accept the "the sun was in my eyes" excuse from the driver, and thinks she was texting or otherwise not paying attention. And to point out the obvious, if the sun really was in the driver's eyes, why did they hit the accelerator? Jezienicki also blames the crash on the lack of safety features generally, and the fact that there are two westbound lanes on Balboa, which she thinks contributed directly to the crash. "Instead of two lanes, put in a protected bike lane. Or how about a traffic circle? There isn't even a crossing guard on 7th, even though all the kids come out of school this way."
Jezienicki said their family bike was destroyed in the crash; she's not sure she's ready to replace it. "I used to bike everywhere," she told Streetsblog, adding that she intentionally moved to the Inner Richmond because she thought it would be comfortable for walking and biking. "Now I spend 45 minutes to an hour in the car every day. I'm just scared."
