In S.F., pedestrian deaths shine light on street safety Pedestrian fatalities spiked in 2013 - city struggles with safety

A pedestrian crosses Alice B Toklas Place on Polk Street on January 15, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Sofia Liu, 6, was killed, and two people were injured a short distance away at the intersection of Polk and Ellis streets on New Year's Eve. Since New Year's Eve there has been a spate of pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco. less A pedestrian crosses Alice B Toklas Place on Polk Street on January 15, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif. Sofia Liu, 6, was killed, and two people were injured a short distance away at the intersection of Polk and ... more Photo: Pete Kiehart, The Chronicle Photo: Pete Kiehart, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close In S.F., pedestrian deaths shine light on street safety 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Twenty-one people were struck and killed by drivers while walking the streets of San Francisco last year, the highest number of pedestrian deaths since 2007 in a city where three people on an average day get hit by cars or trucks.

Until December, 2013 was shaping up to be an average year in the city for pedestrian fatalities. But in the final month of the year, the death toll spiked, with six pedestrian deaths, including two on New Year's Eve.

Six-year-old Sophia Liu was in a crosswalk at Polk and Ellis streets near the Civic Center with her mother and 4-year-old brother when she was hit by a car. Zhen Guang Ng, 86, was run over in a crosswalk at Rolph and Naples streets in the Crocker-Amazon neighborhood.

The recent spate of pedestrian deaths and serious injuries has refocused a spotlight on a problem that city officials for years have vowed to address and that pedestrian safety advocates say needs more aggressive attention.

Despite San Francisco's reputation as one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the U.S., close to 900 pedestrians a year are hit by automobiles, and the number has been growing in the past few years.

The city's efforts

In 2010, Mayor Gavin Newsom issued an executive directive that called for slashing the number of severe and fatal injuries in half by 2021, and Mayor Ed Lee has followed up, devoting $17 million over the next five years to various pedestrian safety improvements. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has received a $3 million grant to improve traffic signaling.

But Nicole Schneider, executive director of Walk San Francisco, said the city needs to speed things up.

The city has had some "great planning" but has not taken enough action, Schneider said.

"When we have more than 20 people dying on our streets ... that's a public health crisis," she said.

City officials argue that they are working hard to address the problem. Several city agencies, including the MTA, the City Planning Department, the Public Health Department and the city controller's office, are working together on the problem.

Remaking streets

The agencies have identified the areas with the highest rates of pedestrian injuries and have developed plans to make various changes, including re-engineering streets, upgrading curb ramps and installing countdown signals in crosswalks.

Collisions are especially a problem on the city's wide, fast streets such as Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, where cars often approach freeway speeds. The Police Department changed traffic collision database systems last year, allowing the department to get detailed statistics more quickly and work with public health epidemiologists to better understand when, how and why collisions are happening.

Police Cmdr. Mikail Ali noted that significant progress toward pedestrian safety has been made since 2000 when 32 people were killed in a total of 961 collisions, but one thing that the city can't address on its own is human inattentiveness, he said.

"People are not paying attention to their surroundings," Ali said. "They're not paying attention when they're driving a car. They're not paying attention when they're riding a bicycle and they're not paying attention when they're walking."

The mayor on Wednesday announced a campaign to try to tackle that. His "Be Nice, Look Twice" public awareness campaign will begin next month.

Who is at fault?

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Neighborhood Services & Safety Committee plans to hold a joint meeting Thursday with the city's Police Commission to discuss how officers determine fault in serious or fatal collisions involving pedestrians and bicyclists.

Of the 21 fatal pedestrian accidents in 2013, police determined that 14 were the driver's fault and that seven were the result of the pedestrian's behavior, Ali said. Three of the four fatal bicycle collisions in 2013 were determined to be caused by the cyclist's actions, he said.

Ali admits his department has taken heat from the public for "blaming" the victims, but he said everyone - pedestrians, cyclists and drivers - needs to take responsibility for their roles in an accident.

For their part, pedestrians who have been injured on San Francisco streets say anything the city can accomplish to improve safety and accident investigations can't come fast enough.

Jikaiah Stevens was on her way to her job at a Union Square hair salon about 10 a.m. Sept. 26 and waited for the walk signal at Bush and Taylor streets before stepping into the crosswalk.

"The next thing I knew, I had been hit," said Stevens, 31.

She said she lost consciousness when she flew off the hood of a car after the driver hit the brakes. "When I did come to, I just heard her (the driver) saying, 'Oh my god, oh my god,' over and over. ... Then I lost conscious again."

Stevens was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital, the city's trauma center, where she spent seven days, including four in the intensive care unit. Because she had no health insurance, she has racked up $143,000 in medical bills.

Meanwhile, she said, nothing has happened to the driver because it hasn't been determined why the driver hit her.

Permanent injuries

"You don't do anything wrong and you get hit. Yet this person doesn't even receive a ticket and your name is on the bill they just created," said Stevens, who sees a trauma therapist, still experiences back and neck pain, has a piece of her skull permanently lodged in her brain, and will never smell or taste again.

San Francisco Police Sgt. Eric Mahoney, with the traffic collision investigations unit, sympathizes with those frustrations but said enforcement actions are limited.

The drivers in the two New Year's Eve fatalities were arrested, but both are being charged as misdemeanors rather than felonies, according to police.

Recklessness hard to prove

In most cases, Mahoney said, even if a citation is issued, it's only for the driving infraction - and that's the same regardless if someone is hit. "To prove someone is a reckless driver is a pretty high bar to reach," he said.

Schneider, head of Walk San Francisco, said the culture around driving and walking needs to change.

"We don't want people behind bars, but we also need to send a message to drivers that you can't kill someone and pretend it was an accident," she said. "You can't just not stop at a stop sign or turn into an intersection and not see somebody and kill them."

Danger zone Pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco hit a six-year high last year: Year Collisions Deaths 2007 798 24 2008 805 13 2009 734 16 2010 823 13 2011 875 17 2012 948 16 2013 NA 21 Source: San Francisco Police Department