SFPD

SFPD Traffic Company Commander Mikail Ali offered a particularly bizarre explanation yesterday for why a significant number of pedestrians killed in the city are Asian seniors: They're recent immigrants who are confused by our traffic patterns, he said.

In an emotionally-charged discussion, the dangers of walking on San Francisco's streets took center stage at yesterday's Board of Supervisors meeting, the first since an alarming number of San Franciscans were injured and killed by drivers over the holiday season.

Tune in to 910 AM at 6 p.m. for Gil Gross' show, where I'll be on the air to discuss SF's recent spate of pedestrian crashes, the SFPD's habit of blaming pedestrian victims, and what we can do to make our streets safer. For a preview of the show, you can check out Gross's August discussion about research on "distracted walking."

Despite the glimmer of hope brought by the arrest of two reckless drivers who killed pedestrians, the SFPD is still blaming people walking on the streets for getting hit by motorists.

In what could be a departure from the SF Police Department's usual failure to penalize reckless driving, officers have arrested two of the five motorists who have killed people on San Francisco streets since December 20.

The SFPD's Major Accident Investigation Team has been renamed the Traffic Collision Investigation Team, and the department's website has removed the term "accident" from its contact info page. The news follows a Streetsblog post on October 21, in which we pointed out that SFPD regularly violates its official policy of referring to car crashes as "collisions."

Yesterday evening I returned to the Wiggle, where reports continue of SFPD officers targeting bicycle commuters rolling stop signs. To my surprise, there were no police to be found during their typical shift at about 6:45 p.m., but I did find a driver double-parked right behind the crosswalk on Waller and Steiner Streets. In the exact same spot where officers can usually be spotted admonishing bike commuters for doing an "Idaho stop," the driver of this car pretty much put every passerby in danger for at least the ten minutes I was there, and faced no consequences.

Bicycle commuters on the Wiggle continue to be confronted by SFPD officers posted at intersections issuing warnings and tickets for what police deem to be dangerous violations of stop sign laws. Police claim they're obligated to respond to complaints from neighbors who apparently see the behavior as a threat to public safety.

Anyone who keeps track of the daily reports that come out of the SFPD's press office might be surprised to learn that the department has a policy of using the term "collision" -- not "accident" -- when referring to traffic crashes. That's because, in practice, the SFPD's top brass and press officers use "accident" as their term of choice, while "collision" is used only occasionally.