San Francisco police arrested a 21-year-old suspect last Thursday for driving into and killing Binod Budhathoki, 30, who was crossing Cortland Avenue and Andersen Street in Bernal Heights on October 4. The lead image is a shrine at the location. From the SFPD:
Henriquez Ulloa was transported to San Francisco County Jail and booked for the following charges: felony hit and run (20001(a) CVC), hit and run incident that results in death (20001(b)(2) CVC), vehicular manslaughter (192(c)(1) PC), destroying or concealing evidence (135 PC), and basic speed law (22350 CVC).
If readers want more details on the crash and the neighborhood response, check out Oscar Palma's excellent story in Mission Local. Palma quotes SFPD Captain Gerald Newbeck, who said the motorist was driving so erratically that even a red light wouldn’t have stopped them. I would add that neither would flashing beacons, more paint, plastic posts, or all the other marginal improvements SFMTA keeps installing. It seems unlikely speed cameras would have deterred this driver either.
You know what else would not have stopped the driver? Another San Francisco Vision Zero resolution.
If any reader doubts that, watch the security camera footage below sent to Streetsblog by Karis Lama, a resident on Cortland Avenue.
In the video, a sedan streaks past on Cortland, a merchant and residential street, at clearly egregious speeds. Although the crash itself is out of view, eight seconds in, there's a horrible thud. This is the sound that woke up many residents of the area, who are used to drivers blowing down Cortland as if it's the track at the Indianapolis 500. One described the scene immediately afterwards: Budhathoki's body was flung across the intersection, his head crushed, at least one of his shoes flung off.
That thud should have been and could have been from the driver hitting a concrete planter, a cast-iron bell, or a Jersey barrier, instead of a father trying to cross the street. Cortland has red-painted curbs. It has "hi vis" crosswalks. But what it doesn't have is any of the concrete infrastructure that could have replaced an unfathomable tragedy with a badly damaged car, as in this image below of a crosswalk in New York:
Streetsblog and the World Bollard Association have posted hundreds of pictures from New York, London, and other places where reckless drivers impaled their cars on real infrastructure in cities that are serious about Vision Zero. Drivers are just as reckless in those places. But the infrastructure puts human life above sparing the occasional fender damage.
I don't know if the driver on Cortland was drunk, stoned, or just out of their mind. I do know if they tried to drive like that through sections of Paris, New York, London, or many other cities, they would have crashed long before they hit Budhathoki. In fact, until Oakland DOT removed some citizen installations last year, even driving on some streets in Oakland would have stopped them.
Budhathoki is the 13th pedestrian killed in San Francisco this year. Little plastic posts and paint don't mean shit. Vision Zero resolutions don't mean shit. If the city wants to stop reckless driving, then it has to do it physically, with concrete and cast iron. But as long as politicians and DOTs keep allowing traffic engineers or disgruntled motorists to veto real safety measures, prioritizing automobile throughput and motorist convenience, Vision Zero will simply never be achieved in San Francisco.
