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San Francisco Still Among Most Dangerous For Pedestrians
dkatana writes: The city of San Francisco averages 200 injuries per year and 30 deaths. This is almost double the number of Barcelona, Catalonia, which has about the same population. The city started a Vision Zero program, aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminate pedestrian deaths by 2024. But after a year-long Vision Zero education push called Safe Streets SF, whose key message is that pedestrians always have the right of way, the results have been modest. Now a series of banners on light poles in the South of Market neighborhood with the message: 'Slow down! We live here!' are trying to convince drivers to respect people on foot.
If only we force people to engage in a diverse, non-confrontational conversation that raised awareness of this community issue, it would solve the empathy-deficit problem practically overnight.
People per square foot in SF is pretty dang tight. Between 8 and 10 million people live in the Bay area, depending on who's estimates you enjoy. To make it in and out of the city, you need to use Public transportation, which means lots more pedestrians than other places I have been (including DC, NYC).
Finally, we have things like the Embarcadero where cars can be stuck for a really long time because the Pedestrians have the right of way and at lunch time thousands are crossing the streets. A system like a ramp which allowed both cars and people would make a big difference in those areas.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
still the best.
So San Fransisco is like china, where pedestrians are worth so little it is better to kill them if you run over them. Honestly, sometimes pedestrians do dart out and there are cases where there is no way to avoid them. But with numbers like this, it is evident of a basic disregard for human life, where one makes no attempt to avoid killing someone.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
whose key message is that pedestrians always have the right of way
What? Should that be "they always have the right of way if on a crosswalk"? Because otherwise I think I can explain your pedestrian death rate...
...But if it is anything like my home town, a concurrent campaign of 'hey, you there walking, actually exercise a little caution' would be probably a good idea too. A few too many people on both sides of this equation acting like they are the only thing moving out there.
Pedestrians getting hit by cars does NOT mean that cars are ONLY to blame. Pedestrians do idiotic things, as well.
How about getting your head out off you ass and keep you eyes on the road and not on your phone when you cross the street.
They believe their right to walk into traffic overrules the basic laws of physics. I hate driving in the city, but have to do it on a regular basis.
-- Will program for bandwidth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...the way pedestrians act in Boston and New York: total chaos. People wander across the street randomly, and drivers are very aware that this is going to happen, so they slow down. It made for a much more pedestrian-friendly environment there than on the west coast, where cars travel far too fast and pedestrians are timid and restrained.
Nearly got knocked over when crossing - legally - at a pedestrian crossing in Berkeley, and a driver refused to stop and I had to jump out of the way.
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Peds SHOULD NOT have the right of way. people can stop on a dime. cars cannot. you dont make the oil tanker yield to the dinghy.
Seems like a self-correcting problem, given enough time.
Giving pedestrians the right-away seems like a problematic policy. It sounds nice, but physics suggests that a pedestrian can overcome their momentum and come to an immediate stop more successfully than a motor vehicle, which further suggests that perhaps the pedestrian should stop and wait, rather than the cars.
Giving pedestrians the right of way is the problem. In my state the right of way is determined by the rules of the road. If someone is in a cross walk i
or crossing corn to adjacent corner against a red light for traffic or with a lit walk light they have the right of way. If they are crossing that, its a matter of circumstances as in who was there first even though the car has a duty to not hit anything or drive faster than they can stop for their vision. Essentially the car is mostly at fault except when someone walks in front of them.
Anyways, a few towns decided to give pedestrians the right of way always. In those towns the idiots Will walk right in front of a semi truck and cross the road in between intersections. I called the cops thinking one dude was trying to kill himself or something and was told he had the right of way. They don't even look to see if something is coming, just stepped out into traffic and yell at you if your screeching halt from 20-30mph took you a little close to them . It is as if the laws of physics don't exist in those towns because the pedestrian has the right of way.
More people walk to work in SF than anywhere I've ever been. I wander what the accident rates are per mile walked?
What? You want details and careful analysis? All they said was "among the most dangerous" and a one-off statistic to lead in their story about a pedestrian safety advertizing campaign. Neither the summer or the article specify what other cities was compared. As far we know Barcelona could be exceptionally safe and San Francisco could be the safest (by some metric) city in North America.
And of collisions between drivers and pedestrians, 64 percent were the driver’s fault.
Given what I've seen of how pedestrians acted when I worked in SF years ago, I'm shocked that that number isn't reversed towards pedestrians being more at fault. They routinely waited OUT IN THE STREET for the light to change, rather than stay two steps back on the nice, safe sidewalk. It was truly the most bizarre pedestrian behavior I have seen in a city. They also would start crossing a busy six lane main road when there was no chance for them to make it across before the light changed. Many times I would be in the far right lane, and couldn't see pedestrians meandering across because of large trucks to my left. Light turns green, I start to go, and... whoops! Almost hit a clueless pedestrian.
1. post traffic cops/cameras at bad areas 2. photograph offenders 3. Track down & levy enormous fines
That's only possible if pedestrians wear license plates on their asses, because probably a good percentage of the time it's their fault.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Yes, what you're saying is true to a large extent, but pedestrians also act all superior and like they always have the right of way - they don't. Pardon the pun, but it's a two way street. I'd definitely like more pedestrian friendly areas with lower speed limits (and bike lanes for everyone!), seriously... but we don't have that, so pedestrians need to be careful to. Yes, I drive to work, but I otherwise do a lot of walking, and never presume someone sees me or that I have the right of way when I'm cutting across a street and not using a crosswalk.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Maybe if they advertised to pedestrians that every time you make a car, or line of cars, brake or stop you cause it to waste gas having to accelerate to get back up to speed. Really play up on all that tree-hugging guilt. A poster with someone jaywalking in front of a VW diesel and birds dropping dead out of the sky. Yeah, that'd do it. It is San Francisco after all.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
There's a little road on the island of Tutuila, American Samoa, that has the sign "5 MPH or rocks". Made me slow down. :)
Indeed. I actually got into an argument with a former acquaintance regarding this point. He claimed that pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way, anywhere, anytime, in any circumstance. I then asked why people can be ticketed for jaywalking. I asked who has legal liability if the pedestrian willfully jumps in front of a car.
His inane response went along these lines: jaywalkers still have the right of way but are ticketed so as to discourage people from getting injured. The driver is always at fault because they have a duty to always look out for potential road hazards. Failure to keep an adequate lookout and safe speed means the driver is liable.
Obviously, CVC does NOT agree with his interpretation of the law.
Every time I visit SF I am surprised by how readily the pedestrians casually cross the streets--they will cross at red lights; they will walk into cross traffic without regard to safety, expecting drivers to stop; and if they do bother to look before crossing, they take their sweet time. If you tried to pull that shit in Southern CA, especially in downtown or west LA, you'd be dead by lunchtime. I also found that drivers in SF are a lot more cautious and less aggressive than LA drivers. LA drivers are scary, especially in the westside. The aggression levels there are insane: drivers cutting each other off, running red lights, not stopping at intersections, and squeezing through narrow openings are extremely common occurrences. I suspect it is a combination of the traffic and culture there: it's a lot of local streets, with almost no relief from constant traffic gridlock; then add in a culture that rewards self-entitlement and conspicuous consumption, and the result is a lot of people behind the wheel with death wishes.
The pedestrians there think they own the road, nobody pays attention to the walk signal. I'm surprised more of them are not run over.
Too many hobos in SF. "Levy enormous fines". But how will you collect anything?
Have gnu, will travel.
San Francisco has a bizarre attitude about treating its homeless drunks and drug addicts like tourist attractions. You have to see it to believe it. If a homeless person is sitting in the middle of the street, the police will not move them. They are given blankets and clothes regularly, so of course more and more make their way into the city. I'm not saying some compassion is not required to help these people, but SF's treatment of them is absurd and only compounds the problem.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
See page 9:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...
SF is 1.7 deaths per 100k residents
Dallas, Detroit, El Paso, Oklahoma City, Albequerque, and Jacksonville are all over 3 deaths per 100k residents.
I grew up in the bay area and the Muni bus drivers in SF were always legendary for being the ones who would run people over. Even in the crosswalks. This has cost Muni millions of dollars in settlements over the years. Not to mention how the connectors to the overhead electric cables on some routes like to come loose and whack people. Local tip: If you see a bus anywhere near you get out of the way.
Ya, seriously. Signage and awareness campaigns can only go so far. The engineering is solid. Everyone knows what they *should be doing*. Police need to re-focus a major part of their beat work on traffic violations. All the laws and all the engineering go unheeded if people don't think there are sufficiently detrimental consequences to their actions.
Enforce the damn laws.
The organization asks that people default to "giving right-of-way" (yielding) to pedestrians. Pedestrians do not legally have permanent right-of-way. Right-of-way is determined by law, planning, and engineering.
The California Vehicle Code requires that all automobile drivers YIELD to pedestrians in the road, but as pedestrians do not have a permanent right-of-way, they can still be cited for jaywalking.
The folks at Strong Towns argue that when the streets are designed for speed (wide lanes, no obstacles like trees near the curb, no curbside parking), the drivers generally feel safe to drive fast, regardless of the speed limit or billboards, so they do; and when that expectation is violated by, say, a pedestrian, people die. (See, for example, http://www.strongtowns.org/jou... : when the infrastructure is designed to make drivers who make mistakes safe, it makes it dangerous for pedestrians who make mistakes or are merely in the way of a driver's mistake.)
TFA says that the bulk of accidents occurs at relatively few intersections, so I wonder what characterizes those (other than heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I grew up in Los Angeles and have lived near San Francisco for the past 20 years. LA drivers consider running over jaywalkers a civic duty.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Why was this voted down? CA still has a very strong car culture. Just look at the traffic in San Francisco. There are a lot of people here that are very anti-pedestrian and anti-mass transit.
When I lived in K.C. there was a crosswalk on a curved 4 lane street I had to cross. Cars rarely slowed down even though the crosswalk was larger than normal. I started carrying a brick raised high above my head. They then slowed down.
If a driver is not capable of preparing to deal with kids or animals that have no way of knowing the road rules then they should not be on the road. Adults acting like such kids or animals is an annoying thing, but if that's how they act in that area then you have to drive accordingly. There's plenty of drunks at night walking along some of the roads I drive along, and while it is true they should know better than staggering onto the road or running in front of cars thinking they are taxis, it's still the duty of the driver to take care not to hit them.
Fault does not matter. It's the driver's responsibility to do their best to avoid a collision with a pedestrian no matter who is at fault.
If you don't hit them fault doesn't matter.
When you've got a dead kid on the road blaming them just sounds petty no matter what they did.
IMO just don't live in the CtPaTown and you'll be fine.
with very few exceptions every single comment in this thread blames pedestrians for jumping out in front of cars
in San Francsico, crossing a street, within the crosswalk, with the light, is a stupid act of faith that some idiot isn't going to
mow you down. bikers taking turns without looking, ubers shooting across the street looking only at their phones
some self important dickhead in a bmw blowing a red 20 seconds after its turned.
collectively - you're the worst. people who might actually want to walk 10 blocks instead of getting in their cars are effectively
disposable human trash who should really just be killed for forcing you to slow down for a few seconds.
Here's what I suspect. San Francisco has a lot of pedestrians for an American city, but it's still proportionally lower than Barcelona. Barcelona has a lower proportion of automobile traffic and a higher proportion of pedestrian traffic. Thus, more vehicle-pedestrian accidents in San Francisco.
The second amendment is about arming bears. And outside some National Parks, there isn't much bear-human interaction by people who don't understand how dangerous an armed bear is. So it's mostly a non-issue.
A propaganda effort to change how safe drivers are can help a little bit, but what makes cities safer is physical world changes that make it easier to drive safely and harder to hit someone. In Seattle, for example, they redesigned 75th street after an accident and saw a major reduction in the number of collisions. (Things like removing parking, adding bike lanes, etc...)
http://www.seattle.gov/transpo...
Bike lanes are actually useful in that even if not used by bikes, they ensure you can nudge out into a road slightly for better visibility when turning into it if you need to. You also are less likely to intuitively drive as close to the center line as if you are avoiding parked cars.
Isn't this just part of their plan on eliminating the homeless?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Been a long time (almost 15 years) since I was in Barca, but there was very little traffic along La Rambla and in the old town. The most touristy were the least trafficked areas. Whereas the tourist areas of SF are along major arteries...
It's amazing how drivers suddenly see you when you are pushing a shopping cart that'll badly damage their cars and quite possibly the drivers themselves.
Plus then you have a nice place to store stuff. Like pieces of foam painted to look like cinder blocks. Those come in useful for throwing at particularly jerky cars every now and then.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Admittedly I've only been to SF a few times, but I've never gotten the feeling that it has a strong car-culture, and that most of the car-culture that exists comes from transplants that had a strong car-culture where they came from.
I've found the subway and bus system relatively good and the taxi fares cheaper than if I had to pay to park.
Flat-out, the city was not laid-out for daily car use by its inhabitants, and houses with soft-story first floors with garages have proven to be dangerous with the earthquakes. If I had to live there I would probably think really hard about living further south on the peninsula or on Treasure Island if I wanted to keep vehicles, as the city itself is not conducive to it.
As for pedestrian accidents, It doesn't really matter if a pedestrian has the right-of-way if the vehicle cannot stop in time to avoid hitting them. From the perspective of the action that led to the accident perspective, pedestrians are probably at-fault for a lot of the accidents, even if legally the driver is at-fault, especially for narrow streets with parked cars as obstructions. Simply put, don't cross where it isn't safe to cross.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There ^^, fixed it for you. Catalonia isn't a separate state (yet). For most of us outside the US we don't even need to qualify which country Barcelona's in because we all know this as a given, and anywhere else in the new world that has the same name is the exception and needs to be qualified. Interesting that you mentioned "Catalonia" though... pushing some sort of political agenda or just ignorance of the place? Also interesting that you picked Barcelona and not some other better known or more congested city. This whole story just seems a bit weird and parochial.
Actually why even this story about San Francisco? It's hardly the worst offender in the US for pedestrian deaths at 1.7 deaths/100,000 - picking three comparable sized cities from Table 8 of this doc:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/P...
* Detroit, MI: 3.99
* Jacksonville, FL: 3.23
* Austin, TX: 2.97
It looks to me like a lot of US cities could do a lot to reclaim their cities back from cars, when you look at London which is vastly bigger and more congested with pedestrians. There were 65 pedestrians killed in London in 2013 compared with San Francisco's 29, which is a city a tenth the size:
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/me...
http://www.transalt.org/sites/...
You need both. You need some streets that are clearly for cars and some streets that are clearly minor streets for pedestrians. And you need to make it possible to avoid those minor streets except possibly in the first or last block or two of your trip. The problem with SF is that there are too many miles of streets that are all designed to be pedestrian-friendly, so drivers start ignoring all the visual cues like curbside parking and start driving like they're on the freeway. At the same time, the pedestrians act like they own the roads. This is not a good combination.
Market St., Oak St., Fell St., and Guerrero St. are where all the accidents occur. I haven't dealt with any of them but Market. That one is awful for many reasons, the biggest being that there needs to be a major boulevard going in that direction, but there isn't one, so everyone used this divided four lane that then got turned into a divided two lane as buses took over lanes, and now has been turned into a bus/cab-only road, which just spreads the problem out to adjacent roads that weren't designed to handle the extra traffic and creates further difficulty actually getting anywhere by car. I predict that the accidents will just shift to Oak, Fell, Geary, and Mission, with no real statistical improvement overall. A much better solution would have been to ban pedestrians on Market, and then set up some pedestrian overpasses or underpasses at about every fourth intersection. However, the businesses along Market street wouldn't have liked that....
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You're F***ing nuts if you try to drive in SF. Transit works. Not as well as some countries, but it does work.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
When I was hiking around Lake Louise, Alberta the owner at the lodge I was staying at gave me a canister of pepper spray. In 5 days I didn't see a single bear and one of the locals said it was extremely rare to sight one and that I should feel privileged to meet one rather than spraying capsicum in her eyes.
So yeah, I'm all for arming bears if it means they don't get fumigated by witless tourists.
Hmm I'm guessing that 30 pedestrian deaths per year is a mere fraction of San Francisco's gun deaths per year but obviously motorists are a scourge on society
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Thailand has two rules for pedestrians: #1 You can walk anywhere, anytime. #2 If you get hit it's your own fault. Amazingly, it's safer this way. Pedestrians are on the defensive. None of this crap about lying in a hospital bed while your lawyer sues the life out of the car's insurance company, Look both ways before crossing the sidewalk. No cops protect you, so you have to be careful for yourself. Defensive is safer.
You're F***ing nuts if you try to drive in SF. Transit works. Not as well as some countries, but it does work.
When I lived there I could drive for fifteen minutes including parking or I could take a bus, light rail, and a bus and it would take me an hour and fifteen minutes in the best case. Can't count on a taxi at commute times, either. Public transportation in SF is shit. All the buses should go away and be replaced by PRT. Keep the rail, to feed it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Obviously, CVC does NOT agree with his interpretation of the law.
So what? The local code does, and SF isn't the only place where that happens. Santa Cruz is another one, though only downtown. Also, the CVC treats crosswalks that way; if you cross against a signal, that's illegal, but if you hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk, you're at fault even if they are crossing against the signal. You are responsible for being aware of idiots in crosswalks. Don't outdrive your vision.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Two dope(s) were talking and looking at each other and stepped out into traffic between two parked cars without ever looking at the roadway. I slammed on the brakes and leaned on the horn which got their and a nearby cop's attention. He wrote me a ticket for failure to yield to a pedestrian as I protested that had I in fact failed to yield, the idiots would have been under the car instead of sipping cappuccino in a cafe across the street. At least I got the satisfaction of seeing them jump when I hit the horn.
I used to see that sort of careless, walking out into traffic all the time there. Berkeley may have more than its share of smart people, but someone should teach them how to cross a street safely.
Population density can cause accidents. Too many people and too many cars in too small an area leads to accidents. San Francisco is also famous for rather steep hills and twisty turns. One can well imagine that breaking distances are greater on the downhill slopes and any mechanical failure on a steep hill is likely to have amplified, negative results. cars simply rolling out of parking spaces when parked on an incline probably account for several deaths a year there.
I would imagine SF has the highest percentage of fucktards looking at their iPrecious when crossing the street.
One partial solution with not much cost would be NOT to have the walk signal for pedestrian and the left (or right) turn signal for cars active at the same time. Either stop the pedestrian for longer or stop the cars for longer.
Indeed this is how it is in Europe, for example.
Left turn in traffic in California are frustrating enough without pedestrians ... and by the way, sometimes during a left turn the driver vision on the left hand side is occluded by the body frame around the windshield, which could be quite thick in some cars, so in some very unlucky situations the driver cannot even see the pedestrian.
Again, i think the current rules having drivers and pedestrian both have a green light is just idiotic.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Liberals will fly!
When the muslims throw them off roof tops.
I find it quite hilarious how pants-wetting terrified you are of Muslims. It's absurd. When you die, it will not be because of Muslims; liberal or not.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
As a resident of the Boston, MA area I can say this might not help. In my experience, giving pedestrians right-of-way in all instances causes people to simply walk into traffic. I see it all the time. They just walk out expecting everyone to stop because they have the right-of-way. Just the other day some woman walked out onto a four lane divided highway, holding up her hand like a traffic cop!
Conversely I have seen drivers almost cause accidents by screeching to a halt to stop for a person who looks like they might possibly be considering the option of crossing the street. The problem seems to be that, behind the wheel or not, people aren't that bright.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I was actually looking at a plot of accidents when I gave that list, and the hot spots were clustered around those streets. Apparently some of the problems have shifted since the map I looked at. Either way, Market still looks like the biggest, most consistent problem zone to me.
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Based on a 25 minute walk, each way, twice a day, through SF, is that regardless of how some/most pedestrians behave, motorists consistently break the law.
It's a rare week (so 250 minutes of walking) where I am not almost run over, while in a crosswalk, with the walk signal illuminated, by a motorist facing a red light, more than five times.
And when you consider how little of my time is spent crossing the street, that actually gets really scary.
You could put a cop on a busy corner, and just have them sitting there all day handing out traffic tickets, and they'd easily generate more revenue than they cost the city. They might make things safer too.
Yes, what you're saying is true to a large extent, but pedestrians also act all superior and like they always have the right of way - they don't. Pardon the pun, but it's a two way street. I'd definitely like more pedestrian friendly areas with lower speed limits (and bike lanes for everyone!), seriously... but we don't have that, so pedestrians need to be careful to. Yes, I drive to work, but I otherwise do a lot of walking, and never presume someone sees me or that I have the right of way when I'm cutting across a street and not using a crosswalk.
Indeed. My dog and I walk a solid 3-4 miles a day. Every day we cross this same street where people want to make an unprotected right turn onto a bigger street. We have the walk symbol and always stop at that intersection and have a good look around because most of the right turners are too busy looking left to see us cross in front of them. Just this morning someone was trying to make an unprotected left after we started crossing. They thankfully saw us after they blocked the intersection they were attempting to cross. Everyone focuses on the cars around them and never bother to see if they might hit a pedestrian until it is too late.
A large part of the problem is the huge percentage of one-way streets in SF. Once, I looked down the street for traffic, not realizing it was one-way, and nearly stepped in front of a moving bus. SF can be a bit scary that way...
And people that live there tend to be also very, very stupid. This is why stupid people get hit by cars and die. Because they're fucking too fucking stupid to understand that pedestrians are responsible too..