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More people died in S.F. from traffic crashes than homicides in 2024
Nora Mishanec, Danielle Echeverria
9–11 minutes
A large memorial was erected on the corner of Ulloa Street and Lennox Way in the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco, where a family of four was killed in March when an SUV crashed into a bus stop as they waited for a bus to go to the zoo.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
For the first time in recent history, San Francisco recorded more traffic fatalities than homicides in 2024, a stunning sign that the city has failed to make its streets safer despite years of efforts.
Forty-one people were killed in San Francisco traffic this year, the worst on record since 2007. Among the victims were a family of four — a Portuguese mother, a Brazilian father and their two young children — whose deaths at a West Portal bus stop in March transfixed the city and briefly galvanized efforts to improve pedestrian safety.
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By contrast, the city in 2024 recorded the lowest number of homicides since 1960, with police investigating 34 murders this year. The decline was part of a national trend that saw homicides fall to pre-pandemic levels in most major U.S. cities. But the drop was unusually pronounced in San Francisco, where experts attributed the decline in part to an aging population and less social upheaval following the pandemic.
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Meanwhile, traffic fatalities remain at what U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called “crisis levels” in a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report earlier this year. Policy groups have blamed the trend in part on bigger, heavier vehicles that better protect passengers but pose a far greater danger to pedestrians and bicyclists than smaller cars.
“It’s been an absolutely devastating year,” said San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Transportation Planner Shannon Hake. “We are seeing more crashes related to very large vehicles, very fast vehicles.”
One person was killed in a vehicle accident on Crossover Drive near 19th Avenue in San Francisco in the afternoon on Christmas Day.
Courtesy of Ben Yip
A driver killed in a fiery Christmas Day crash near Golden Gate Park and a pedestrian killed Friday on the Great Highway became the latest fatalities in a deadly year that highlighted just how far the city must go to achieve its goal of eliminating traffic deaths. While 2024 illustrated limits of street engineering in the face of reckless and distracted driving, transportation officials are optimistic that speed cameras and greater traffic enforcement will improve safety in the coming year.
Frustration with the lack of progress tackling traffic deaths bubbled to the surface at a recent San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board meeting, where city employees and public commenters expressed disappointment with the city’s unending streak of pedestrian fatalities.
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“How many more people need to die so that I can walk safely across the street with my three young children?” said René Picazo, an Ashbury Heights resident.
Small changes, halting progress
Despite more than a decade of investment, the city has struggled to make progress toward reducing traffic fatalities, with recent years seeing a steady stream of heartbreaking and high-profile crashes.
Traffic is seen moving along King Street next to a sign on Fourth Street alerting pedestrians to wait for the pedestrian signal at a Muni stop in the middle of Fourth Street.
Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle
More than half of San Francisco’s traffic fatalities this year were pedestrians. The victims included two 94-year-old men who were killed within days of each other in the Richmond District.
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“We know how to eliminate traffic deaths, but we need state and federal governments to work with us, and we need San Francisco leadership to be collaborating as well,” SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin told the Chronicle in an interview.
Tumlin said nearly every municipality is struggling to bring down road fatalities. But while local officials and traffic engineers “know exactly what is needed” to prevent deaths on city streets, Tumlin said they have largely failed to find partners among regulators and manufacturers.
“Safety regulations for motor vehicles are mostly designed to protect vehicle occupants rather than people outside the vehicle,” he said.
In a year-end report, SFMTA said its “quick-build” projects had shown promise, reducing car crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists by an estimated 32% in areas where the projects were implemented. But, agency analysts noted, the small-scale interventions were not enough to combat what they said was a citywide — and nationwide — increase in reckless driving, a drastic drop in traffic enforcement and the rise of heavier cars.
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“It feels like we are treading water,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who has advocated to significantly ramp up traffic enforcement, which plummeted during the pandemic. “Quick-build investments seem like a big deal, as do a lot of other things we’ve done over the past 10 years, and yet this is a historically bad year for crashes and fatalities.”
Some motorists believe pedestrians must take more responsibility, pointing to cases like that of the 64-year-old man fatally struck while lying down in a Mission District street in November. Street safety advocates disagree, noting that even small interventions like high-visibility paint, metal signs and plastic posts have proved effective at guiding traffic and protecting pedestrians and bikers. Experts say dangerous driving is due to a combination of cellphone distractions, anxious drivers and ride-sharing vehicles that stop and start frequently.
A study by the Department of Public Health’s Vision Zero team found that about 170 pedestrians suffer severe injuries on San Francisco streets each year on average. The number of pedestrians treated for severe or critical injuries at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital has fallen slightly in recent years, though researchers noted that could be due to a drop in foot traffic since the start of the pandemic.
Overall, San Francisco has struggled to prove that millions of dollars in street safety investments can provide results, even as transportation officials argue that the city is doing better than its peers.
A shocking crash
Across San Francisco, outrage over road deaths coincided with backlash over attempts to improve street safety.
No neighborhood was more emblematic of that contradiction than West Portal, where an elderly driver mowed down a couple with their two small children while they awaited a bus to the San Francisco Zoo.
A large memorial in West Portal honored Matilde Moncada Ramos Pinto, 38, her husband, Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, and their sons, 3-month-old Cauê and 2-year-old Joaquim, who were killed as they waited for a bus to go to the zoo.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle
In the aftermath of the crash, neighborhood residents were bitterly divided over plans to dramatically redesign streets near the site of the tragedy. Opponents of the plan argued that the area’s street design was unrelated to the high-speed collision, in which the driver told investigators that she sped down the wrong side of the road after mixing up the brake and gas pedals.
West Portal resident Johanna Dimayuga told the Chronicle that she was inside her home when she heard a loud crash followed by a baby’s screams. She looked out her window and saw the chaotic aftermath of the collision: a destroyed white SUV leaking fluids, an overturned stroller and victims blasted in different directions by the force of the crash.
Paramedics rendered aid, but within days all four had died in what many residents considered one of the most shocking and senseless crashes in recent memory.
Dimayuga placed candles at the crash site. Soon, other people arrived with flowers. By day’s end, the impromptu memorial had overtaken the large patch of grass in front of the library, where it remained for weeks. Mourners arrived with photographs of the couple, who moved to San Francisco during the pandemic.
But despite the tragedy, San Francisco transportation officials appeared unable to build widespread public support for street safety projects amid backlash from drivers who say the city is waging a war on cars.
Malena Mackey Cabada, a campaign associate with the advocacy group Walk San Francisco, called 2024 “a horrible year for traffic-related fatalities” and urged city officials to remain committed to Vision Zero, its 11-year-old plan to eliminate roadway deaths by slowing traffic and redesigning intersections to maximize pedestrian safety.
“Zero is still the right number,” she said.
Dec 30, 2024
Breaking & Enterprise Reporter
