When it comes to San Francisco’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2024, it’s hard to find any reassuring numbers.

We’re five years into the 10-year goal. And yet just two-thirds into 2019, 22 people have lost their lives on the city’s streets. That’s one less than died in all of 2018 and two more than died in all of 2017. We’re on pace to surpass the 31 deaths in 2014, the year Vision Zero began.

Counting those who’ve died on the freeways in city borders — which the city doesn’t include in its official tally — we’ve actually lost 27 people on the roads this year, including 15 pedestrians.

What might help explain why we’ve slipped into reverse when it comes to meeting the goal of ending traffic deaths? One major factor is a dramatic drop in tickets issued to drivers by San Francisco police — a neglect that could be explained by too many unfilled vacancies in the department’s traffic division and ever-changing leadership of the crucial unit.

New figures obtained by The Chronicle show the San Francisco Police Department is ticketing far fewer drivers for illegal behavior behind the wheel than it did the year Vision Zero was adopted.

Vision Zero centers around the “three e’s” — educating users of the roads about safe behavior, engineering safer streets and, yes, enforcement by police officers.

In 2014, the department ticketed drivers for 124,870 traffic violations. So you’d think the number of tickets would have soared since then — especially considering the increase in traffic giving police plenty of fodder. You’d be wrong.

Instead, traffic tickets have dropped precipitously. Last year, the department issued just 50,895 tickets — nearly 75,000 fewer than five years before. In the first half of this year, police issued 21,931 tickets, meaning they’re on pace to see yet another drop for 2019.

Vision Zero directs the Police Department to focus its enforcement on the five most dangerous driving behaviors: speeding, failing to stop at a red light, failing to stop at a stop sign, failing to give pedestrians the right of way, and failing to yield to pedestrians while turning.

The number of citations for those specific behaviors are also distressingly low. Of all the citations handed out in 2014, 30,613 were for those five violations. While that number climbed at first, it fell off dramatically in 2018. Last year, police officers handed out just 20,154 tickets for those five violations. In the first half of this year, they handed out just 10,267.

And looking at the numbers of tickets handed out in the city’s most dangerous police districts for pedestrians and bicyclists is even more alarming. While tickets handed out by the department’s traffic division, which roams the whole city, aren’t mapped, we do know how many citations were handed out by regular officers at district stations.

Guess how many speeding tickets Tenderloin police issued in the first six months of this year? Three. Or one every two months. And how many tickets for failing to yield to pedestrians while turning? None at all. And that’s in a neighborhood known to have some of the most lethal streets in the city.

Tenderloin police aren’t alone in turning a blind eye to bad driving. Police at Northern Station, which includes such busy thoroughfares as Van Ness Avenue and Franklin and Gough streets, didn’t issue a single ticket for speeding or failing to yield in the first half of this year.

“It’s unconscionable that a city committed to Vision Zero would allow enforcement of the most dangerous driving behaviors to drop to these astonishingly low numbers,” said Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk SF, a pedestrian advocacy group. “There’s been a lot less enforcement and a surge of pedestrian deaths. It’s hard to believe these aren’t related.”

Janice Li, advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said the Police Department has many priorities, and it’s sadly easy for traffic enforcement to fall to the bottom of the list — even if that leaves pedestrians and bicyclists at risk.

“A lot of the enforcement piece really depends on internal champions,” she said.

Li said there hasn’t been a champion in the department recently, considering the turnover at the top of the traffic division. The Police Department connected me to Teresa Ewins, its current commander, for answers about traffic enforcement or lack thereof. Neither she nor the department’s spokesmen mentioned she’s been assigned to a different post and won’t hold the job as of Tuesday. Cmdr. Daniel Perea will take over the traffic division; Li counts him as the fifth person to hold the job since Vision Zero began.

Ewins said the traffic division would be fully staffed at 80 officers, but there are only about half that number because of retirements and injuries. It appears the department hasn’t prioritized filling those positions; overall, it has 192 more officers than it did in 2014.

Ewins added that traffic officers can be pulled off their assignments at any time if calls related to more serious issues come in.

“It’s their job — life safety is their No. 1 thing,” she said.

Ewins said traffic deaths aren’t just a San Francisco problem, but that they’re up nationwide, and distracted driving is a culprit — “whether it be pedestrians, bicyclists, people on scooters, skateboarders wearing headphones. Motorists are doing the same thing — they’re on their phones, listening to music. Some people eat, some people put makeup on. These are all distractions, which take attention away from the road, and it creates unfortunately fatal consequences.”

That seems to point to the need for more traffic enforcement — not less.

Perhaps officials realized this because at the end of June, the department created a pilot program of traffic officers charged solely with issuing “focus on the five” violations. They’ve issued 400 citations so far citywide.

Mayor London Breed announced Thursday she’s doubling that program to eight officers and directing district stations — whose officers can also ticket drivers — to step up enforcement.

She’s also directed the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to issue more tickets to drivers parked or stopped in bike lanes and announced, in anticipation of Tuesday’s SFMTA meeting on Vision Zero, a host of street safety improvements. Those include testing traffic-calming measures that force drivers to slow down when turning left and analyzing whether to prohibit right turns on red lights.

Advocates would like to see other changes, too. There’s a continued push at the state level to allow automated speed cameras to ticket drivers going too fast without requiring police officers. The city has only 13 red light cameras now and could install more. Portland, Ore., has hired retired police officers to help with traffic enforcement and has parked empty police cars around the city to make it look like an officer is watching.

Ewins said she supports more “pedestrian scrambles” — allowing pedestrians to cross in any direction at an intersection while all cars wait — and automated speed cameras.

“New ideas are definitely welcome,” she said. “Anything will help.”

None of this is that hard — not compared with the complexity of solving the city’s other big issues such as homelessness, untreated mental illness, drug addiction and the lack of housing.

That’s why Olivia Gamboa, a Walk SF member, San Francisco mother of two little kids and palliative care doctor, is so angry at the lack of progress toward ending traffic deaths.

“We’re talking about painting lines on pavement. ... It’s not rocket science,” she said. “The lack of alarm and lack of urgency is appalling. There are a lot of easy things that could be done quickly to vastly improve the conditions for pedestrians, and they’re just not being done.”

She vividly remembers leaving a meeting near Sutter and Divisadero streets the morning of May 2 and seeing a puddle of blood and a lot of police officers. A truck had hit 77-year-old Galina Alterman as she walked in a crosswalk, and Alterman’s body had just been removed when Gamboa came upon the scene.

“I just felt sick,” she said. “I felt really upset thinking this is an area that is next to a hospital, with medical clinics all around. There’s a ton of vulnerable pedestrians — pregnant women, elderly people, people with disabilities, children. At the same time, there’s a lot of high-speed traffic and not enough done to protect pedestrians.”

Ticketing drivers for bad behavior seems like an incredibly easy step. And it could help end scenes like the one Gamboa saw — the kind that has played out this year over and over again.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf