Mayor Lee: Don’t be a Zero
We Need Public Service NOT Lip Service
It seems as if there is a traffic collision in the news nearly every day in San Francisco. Headlines read like scenes from “Drivers Behaving Badly”: A self-important driver violates a pedestrian’s right of way just to shave 60 seconds off their commute. An aggro driver harasses and cuts off cyclists on busy, dangerous streets.
With 197 collisions within the first week and a half of 2014, we’re well on our way to matching 2013's near-record high of 21 pedestrian fatalities and 4 cyclist fatalities. This isn’t just a string of unfortunate ‘accidents’ — this is a crisis for public health and public safety.
There is a lot of finger pointing from all sides on who is responsible for traffic collisions (just read any comments section on one of these articles). But what is really happening? Are pedestrians too busy texting to look both ways? Are cyclists causing mayhem by blowing through stoplights? Or are drivers not paying enough attention to what is happening around them?
The reality is that there is a hierarchy to the streets, and cars and trucks are at the top of the food chain — the apex predator, if you will. A vehicle is a weapon, and a very large vehicle — think cement mixer, garbage truck or luxury tech bus — is the most deadly weapon of all (well, after the hydrogen bomb).
The stats are killer, too: in 2010, California had the highest number of traffic collisions in the country, with San Francisco leading the state. For every one victim of gun violence in 2012, there were FIVE pedestrian victims of traffic violence. Approximately two to three people are struck by cars on the streets of SF every day. The numbers for last year aren’t out yet, but there were 948 collisions involving vehicles and pedestrians in 2012. Last year’s traffic fatalities were the highest since 2001, and investigators found that drivers were at fault 66% of the time. And the worst part of these numbers… only two of the drivers responsible for these deaths saw any consequences. Yes, you read that right, only two. The others? No citations, no reports filed, NOTHING!
Advocacy groups and community members have called on the city to respond to this crisis in our streets with drastic measures, and it appears that they may actually be listening.
Last week, Supervisor Jane Kim introduced some pretty radical legislation that we can totally get behind. It’s called VISION ZERO, and calls for the city to eliminate traffic deaths within ten years. VISION ZERO is co-sponsored by Supes John Avalos and Norman Yee (who personally survived being hit by a car while walking!), and is backed by Walk San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition, and a diverse coalition of over 20 other community groups in SF!
Last week, the SFPD’s Chief Greg Suhr, and Traffic Company Commander Mikail Ali committed to upholding this vision at a joint hearing of the Police Commission and Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee. They agreed to dedicate 50% of their overall citations to aggro folks violating traffic laws at the most dangerous intersections, revisit old cases and back-cite people who were at fault for injuries, and will also begin issuing citations on the spot for whoever is at fault in a traffic collision. (In the past, if a driver ran over a pedestrian that was in the crosswalk, police would let them leave the scene without even writing them a ticket, as long as they stayed and cooperated! That is crazypants!!) Chief Suhr even apologized for the department mishandling the investigation into the death of cyclist Amelie Le Moullac, and for Sgt Ernst’s behavior at her memorial.
This is a welcome change in tone from the SFPD that we are all too familiar with. Prior to this hearing, SFPD seemed to assume pedestrians were at fault when being hit.
But even with these great commitments from SFPD, we are left to wonder… where is the support for VISION ZERO from the Mayor’s office? The Mayor seems to have a different opinion than the city officials and community groups calling for urgent steps to staunch this public health crisis. He has announced a “Pedestrian Safety Awareness Campaign” that will launch next month, but it sounds to us like he is putting much of the blame on pedestrians (when don’t forget 66% of collisions are the fault of drivers…)
Ummm… seriously??? What’s up Mayor Lee? “Be Nice, Look Twice”??? A cute rhyming slogan is not only worthless, it is deeply offensive to the hundreds of victims of traffic violence and shows that the Mayor is clearly not taking this issue seriously. Imagine how the you would react if Mayor Lee proposed a plan to reduce gun violence with a Public Service Campaign called “Give a Hoot, Don’t Shoot.” We need leadership from the Mayor — not pandering to the vehicular class.
Will you join the rest of the city and call for zero deaths in the next ten years? And will you prioritize the funding in your budget to get the engineering, education and enforcement necessary to save lives? It WOULD be nice, wouldn’t it, to not have to worry about getting killed every time you step into a crosswalk on a green light.
Who is the League of Pissed Off Voters?
We're a bunch of political geeks in a torrid but troubled love affair with San Francisco. We’re blessed to live in America’s most progressive city, but we’re cursed to live in a city where most of the youth who grow up here can’t afford to live here. Frisco has its own dark history of injustice: redevelopment, environmental racism, the "old boys" network. All of us lucky enough to enjoy the San Francisco magic owe it to our City to fight to keep it diverse, just, and healthy. What are you doing to make a difference?
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