Car Crashes

Details updated 5:30 p.m.

A car driver plowed through a bike corral on Saturday in front of Zeitgeist, a bar on the corner of Duboce Avenue and Valencia Street. The driver reportedly stopped and cooperated with police after crashing through 10 of the 11 curbside bike racks, breaking a man's leg, and wrecking at least a dozen parked bikes, according to the Uptown Almanac, which posted photos of the carnage.

A man was hit by a driver while riding his bike across Fell Street at Lyon Thursday night at approximately 9:40 pm. The victim, 25, appeared to have just entered the crosswalk from a pathway on the Panhandle when the driver, a 30-year-old woman, hit him from the side.

“Whose Streets? OUR Streets!” yell rowdy demonstrators when they surge off the sidewalk and into thoroughfares. True enough, the streets are our public commons, what’s left of it (along with libraries and our diminishing public schools), but most of the time these public avenues are dedicated to the movement of vehicles, mostly privately owned autos. Other uses are frowned upon, discouraged by laws and regulations and what has become our “customary expectations.” Ask any driver who is impeded by anything other than a “normal” traffic jam and they’ll be quick to denounce the inappropriate use or blockage of the street.

52-year-old Dr. Kevin Mack was killed while riding a UCSF shuttle van at about 6:20 am this morning when it crashed with a big rig truck at the intersection of Octavia Boulevard and Oak Street, said San Francisco Police Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

On December 10, 2004, Katy Liddell had just stepped off the N-Judah with a sack of cleaning supplies and was walking to her Portside apartment at Harrison and Main in Rincon Hill, when she noticed a cadre of emergency vehicles surrounding the intersection. As Liddell drew closer, she saw something that horrified her.

The driver of a four-door sedan jumped the curb and crashed into the front of Naan N' Curry Restaurant on Irving Street at 8th Avenue around noon today. Surprisingly, no one enjoying lunch on the crowded sidewalk was hurt, but the building suffered some serious damage.

The auto safety bill working its way through Congress includes a provision with major implications for traffic enforcement and safer streets: a rule to equip new cars with "black boxes" capable of recording up to 60 seconds worth of pre-crash data.