San Francisco’s dangerous streets: where bicyclists and pedestrians get hit

A person’s chances of getting fatally hit by a vehicle while walking or biking through San Francisco can change dramatically neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block.

Dangerous roads are concentrated in the northeast core of the city — downtown, South of Market and the Tenderloin — as well as major corridors and streets approaching highway entrances such as Geary Boulevard, Van Ness Avenue and Third Street.

More than 7 in 10 severe or deadly incidents happen on just 12 percent of San Francisco’s streets, according to Vision Zero, the city initiative to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024.

Bicyclists and joggers head up The Embarcadero in San Francisco. Bicyclists and joggers head up The Embarcadero in San Francisco. Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close San Francisco’s dangerous streets: where bicyclists and pedestrians get hit 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Wide roads with multiple lanes that cars zip down are hot spots for pedestrians getting hit.

The “mixing zones” of intersections are particularly dangerous for bicyclists, where cars can enter their lane to make a right-hand turn, said Janice Li, advocacy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. The bicyclists may be continuing straight and get sideswiped. Deaths often involve larger vehicles.

The death Friday of 30-year-old cyclist Tess Rothstein at the intersection of Howard and Sixth streets has renewed attention to transportation safety projects in the city that advocates want sped up and strengthened.

Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, said city streets are primarily designed for vehicles but shouldn’t be.

“We need to use all the tools we have to bring sanity to our streets and save lives immediately.” Medeiros said. “We are all pedestrians, and our city has an obligation to protect those walking, biking or taking transit.”

The biggest underlying factor in fatalities is vehicle speed, followed by drivers failing to yield. Drivers in San Francisco making left turns are responsible for twice as many pedestrian collisions as those making right turns, according to Vision Zero.

Relative to national averages, people in San Francisco are more often injured at intersections than mid-block, said Megan Wier, co-chair of the Vision Zero task force and director of the program on health, equity and sustainability in the city’s Department of Public Health.

The connection between vehicle speed and a pedestrian’s risk of injury or death is well documented.

If a car is traveling at 23 mph and strikes a pedestrian, there’s a 10 percent chance the pedestrian will die. At 32 mph, the risk of death rises to 25 percent; 42 mph, 50 percent; and 58 mph, 90 percent, according to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

The pedestrian’s age plays a big role, too: A 30-year-old is more likely to survive being hit by a car than a 70-year-old. Seniors make up 15 percent of San Francisco’s population but 40 to 50 percent of pedestrians killed in any given year, Wier said.

Not helping pedestrians and bicyclists: vehicle congestion, which is increasing in San Francisco, according to a January report from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

The number of cars entering San Francisco, mostly from the East Bay, increased 27 percent between 2009 and 2018, the report said. Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft account for roughly half the growth in congestion, while the other half can be attributed to employment and population growth.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov