An elderly woman in the crosswalk at Bayshore Boulevard and Silver Avenue on Feb. 3. A runner at Bayshore Boulevard and Arleta Avenue on Valentine\u2019s Day. A 2-year-old in a stroller at Fourth Street and Channel Street on Feb. 27. On March 5, two in one day: a hit and run at Mission Street and Naglee Avenue, and a person on the sidewalk at Kearny Street and Broadway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
San Francisco has marked six traffic fatalities (opens in new tab)<\/a> so far this year. Five were pedestrians.<\/p>\n Over the last year, San Francisco officials have celebrated apparent improvements (opens in new tab)<\/a> in the troubled odyssey toward Vision Zero, a strategy implemented by cities to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries. Recorded traffic fatalities in San Francisco<\/a> rose from 34 in 2023 to 43 in 2024, then fell to 25 in 2025.<\/p>\n Those totals are well below the national average for cities of similar size, according to 2023 data analyzed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (opens in new tab)<\/a>, the most recent available. Still, it\u2019s nearly twice the fatal accidents per capita of New York and Boston, but half of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n But a larger portion of San Francisco\u2019s deaths \u2014 52.9% \u2014 occurs among pedestrians. It\u2019s the highest proportion of all the cities the NHTSA tracks, and it\u2019s been rising since 2020.<\/p>\n Dense cities tend to have slower traffic patterns, which means fewer fatal traffic accidents. But San Francisco is an outlier.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are dozens of design choices that can contribute to pedestrian deaths,\u201d Wesley Marshall (opens in new tab)<\/a>, a professor of civil engineering at Colorado University, and the author of \u201cKilled by a Traffic Engineer,\u201d told The Standard in an email. <\/p>\n \u201cSome seem small, like permissive left turns or where we allow parking near intersections, while others are more fundamental, like high-speed arterial roads running through dense neighborhoods. When streets are designed to move cars quickly through places where lots of people are walking, the risk goes up.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last decade, three San Francisco mayors have made near-identical commitments about pedestrian safety as the city has come no closer to achieving Vision Zero.<\/p>\n \u201cSince day one, I\u2019ve made clear that safety is non-negotiable in San Francisco, and the numbers are clear that our streets are getting safer,\u201d Mayor Daniel Lurie said in January. \u201cBut there\u2019s no question we have more work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n His comments echoed those of his predecessors, emphasizing the intractability of the traffic death emergency for more than a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mayor London Breed, 2024: \u201cSan Francisco has made significant progress in our work to create safer streets, but we have much more work to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mayor Ed Lee, 2017: \u201cWhile we are seeing progress, there is still more we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n The city has its work<\/a> cut out for it. All five of the pedestrian deaths this year occurred at intersections in the \u201cVision Zero High Injury\u201d network. Each location where someone was killed has seen other collisions involving pedestrians in the last five years.<\/p>\n A newly-released report (opens in new tab)<\/a> from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency notes that \u201ccore safety tools\u201d have been applied at every intersection on the 2022 Vision Zero High Injury network. Infrastructure improvements include crosswalk upgrades, longer walk times, and larger painted safety zones, among others. <\/p>\n \u201cBy prioritizing pedestrian safety and working closely with the Mayor\u2019s Office, SFPD, city partners and residents, we are taking concrete steps to make San Francisco\u2019s streets safer and more predictable for everyone who uses them,\u201d said an SFMTA representative.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are lots of urban design things we can do to make crossings shorter and intersections safer for pedestrians via interventions like daylighting<\/a> and curb extensions,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n But the city\u2019s fast-moving intersections still generally prioritize traffic speed and flow over safety for walking people.<\/p>\n At Bayshore Avenue and Silver Avenue, where a pickup truck making a right turn struck and killed a woman in the crosswalk Feb. 3, half the intersection sits shadowed beneath the 101 overpass. This site has seen 12 collisions in the past five years, according to SFMTA data. <\/p>\n \u201cWe could also adjust signals with tools like protected turns or a Barnes Dance (opens in new tab)<\/a> [which stops all vehicle traffic for pedestrians], restrict right turns on red, and improve lighting so crosswalks are much more visible at night,\u201d Marshall said.<\/p>\n