So, what is the primary cause of pedestrian deaths in SF?

[Climber]

Cross at your own risk: San Francisco's most dangerous intersections

San Francisco has been rated the second-most walkable city in the entire United States, bested only by New York.

But the great walking experience comes with a high price.

A new study by the law firm of Walkup, Melodia, Kelly and Schoenberger, which teamed up with data visualization company 1Point21 Interactive, analyzed data from 45,000 collision reports in that time period.

It found that more than a sixth of all pedestrian collisions — resulting in 21 fatalities and 892 injuries — occurred at only 63 San Francisco intersections.

In most of those incidents, the driver of the vehicle, not the pedestrian, was at fault. Speeding and illegal turns were the key factors, according to the study.

Personally I think that most of these deaths and injuries could have been avoided if the pedestrian bothered to look and see if cars were coming before stepping out into the street, many of them don't.

On the other side, we have an epidemic of people texting while driving which is always going to reduce your awareness of what's happening on the street.

In combination, it's a dangerous combination.

But, it seems like they constantly point the finger at the drivers without commenting on the stupidity of the pedestrians, as riders most of us know that having the right of way doesn't make you any less dead or injured.

 

[Blankpage]

As collision avoidance features becoming more standard in cars will greatly reduce the severity of such injuries.
My car is equipped with such a system but unfortunately it doesn't work at low speeds

 

[mototireguy]

Combination of driver/ped faults.

Numerous brain dead peds in SF, crossing on red light, crossing with 1 second remaining on signal countdown clock, crossing mid-block in busy biz districts, standing off the sidewalk in the street on busy corners, etc, often in combination with yapping on their phone blissfully ignorant of their surroundings.

 

[CoorsLight]

Does the study include deaths resulting from slow walking + eye contact?

 

[Eldritch]

I can break it down for you real simple like. The pedestrians are batshit crazy and City planners are making it worse I looked at like half the intersections on that list and seriously almost all of them were within 2 Blocks of my office. Like every intersection near my office in a 2 Block Radius.

This area is a nexus for homeless services, one of the busiest a BART Stations (Powell), a Market Street crossing chokepoint, and City planning is trying to make it worse. I got in a big argument with a City Planner over on Taylor street the other day.

I shit you not, the guy said said that traffic moves too freely in the afternoons at like Taylor and Eddy, it creates undaafe speeds of 35 mph and so they are going to take a lane away and create Parklets in order to slow down traffic.

That intersection is a nightmare parking lot every morning and evening during the commute. People do INSANE shit all the time just to try and get out of the complete gridlock being caused by taking away lanes for bicycle paths and shit.

Combine that with Glide Memorial being at Ellis and Taylor, insane drunk/high hobos staggering out into traffic from between parked cars, cursing at traffic and wandering out into the street in the middle of the block against the light. Then literally across Mason Street, just the other side of the street form the SF Hob Zoo, you have the tourist district of Union Square, so you have foreigners with no concept of American Traffic Laws wandering around with cameras and maps all confused trying to dodge the feces covered psychos when they wander a block too far. It is a total shit show. I NEVER bring my car downtown, this City Planning disaster is one of unheard of proportions. Bike or Transit, that is it, but they have been taking away the fucking motorcycle parking spaces to install these stupid rental bicycle racks and I keep seeing the hobos outside of Glide sleeping with the stolen bicycles.

 

[HappyHighwayman]

Drivers are awful but 99% of peds seem to cross with their headphones in and heads down.

As a cyclist I am constantly observing that nobody is paying attention.

Cyclists blow stop signs all the time.
Drivers stop in the bike lanes.

 

[mototireguy]

Combine that with Glide Memorial being at Ellis and Taylor, insane drunk/high hobos staggering out into traffic from between parked cars, cursing at traffic and wandering out into the street in the middle of the block against the light. It is a total shit show.

Can you position camera and compile blooper/shitshow reel?

Don't actually need to see anyone shitting in the street unless they get run over in the process.

 

[Climber]

Thanks for the perspective, Eldritch, you've probably got a better understanding and a way of articulating it that paints a more exact picture than just about anybody on BARF!

I can only rely on my infrequent visits to SF, but those expose the blatant disregard of the pedestrians for their own safety and that assholeness of the drivers sufficiently to at least get a rough idea of the dynamics there.

 

[Eldritch]

Drivers are awful but 99% of peds seem to cross with their headphones in and heads down.

As a cyclist I am constantly observing that nobody is paying attention.

Cyclists blow stop signs all the time.
Drivers stop in the bike lanes.

SF Bicycle People are pretty much some of the worst people in the world, but they are mainly a problem in a couple of the Mission hotspots and that Market and Castro problem area. Most of the trouble intersections are Hobo laden.

Can you position camera and compile blooper/shitshow reel?

Don't actually need to see anyone shitting in the street unless they get run over in the process.

 

[Climber]

We have a High School over near where I live.

You don't want to drive past it when school gets out because the city caters 100% to the whims of the students.

They found that when the light didn't change in less than 10 seconds after pushing the crosswalk button, that at least one student would just cross anyways...their solution? If a student pushes the button it will change in less than 10 seconds!

By catering to the whims of a few students, they have created a really shitty situation for the drivers and they are also creating future road-kill for many of these students going to big cities.

This isn't the only place I've observed absolute stupidity of the town in catering to the whims of teenagers. How fucking stupid do you have to be to do this? Just total idiocy!

 

[Eldritch]

Thanks for the perspective, Eldritch, you've probably got a better understanding and a way of articulating it that paints a more exact picture than just about anybody on BARF!

I can only rely on my infrequent visits to SF, but those expose the blatant disregard of the pedestrians for their own safety and that assholeness of the drivers sufficiently to at least get a rough idea of the dynamics there.

Yeah, there is a wild sense of pedestrian entitlement in this City that is kind of baffling to me, so the disregard for traffic is certainly a City Wide problem. This is exacerbated by the City's apparent plan to make driving in the City as difficult as possible which promotes reckless driving. The real dangerous intersections are usually because of like I said, crazed hobos and psychotic cyclists who thinks stop signals are for other people. I did have a Lyft driver the other day though that almost plowed through a guy crossing in a crosswalk with the light in SOMA, because he was clearly driving mostly asleep. Most of SF is just giving up their cars and transferring the burden to Ride Sharing Apps.

It is a continued failure in City Planning by SF. They should have had sufficient Taxi infrastructure to support the need for on demand mobility across town. They ignored it to protect the profitability of their advocate industry (Taxi Drivers), who have caused Ride Sharing Apps to be created that have destroyed that industry in order to solve the problem. They are demanding that people use public transit, while giving free transit passes to Hobos and teenagers from the ghetto, who harass, rob, and cover the transit services in filth. Nobody wants to use those services. The Bicycle advocates are promoting a Green Agenda that gives what they want, but disregards the business needs of all the people who WORK in the City but don't live here, which is seriously like 80% of the traffic on the road. The end result is building infrastructure that does not suit the practical needs of the City while catering to a minority political ideal.

It is pretty typical California politics really. Take some cockamamie political idea, invest heavily in a system that caters to that idea, disregard the fact that the idea is unrealistic, impractical, and not what the less vocal majority want, then just sit on top of the shit show making things worse trying to jam your square peg into a round hole talking about how the roundness of the hole is the problem.

 

[budman]

Combination of driver/ped faults.

Numerous brain dead peds in SF, crossing on red light, crossing with 1 second remaining on signal countdown clock, crossing mid-block in busy biz districts, standing off the sidewalk in the street on busy corners, etc, often in combination with yapping on their phone blissfully ignorant of their surroundings.

I would agree that it is a combination. Speeding is an easy target to place blame on, but it is a combination. My Mama always taught me to look both ways and don't count on vehicles seeing you. If you want to stay alive it is up to you.

So walk like you are invisible and don't count on vehicles not crushing you is what needs to be broadcast. The SFMTA/ Vision Zero folks have a pedestrian and bicycle arm and are looking at this stuff. I am constantly amazed even in suburbia how oblivious people are and their expectation that a green light or that cars will stop for them because they have the right of way are.

 

[Climber]

I would agree that it is a combination. Speeding is an easy target to place blame on, but it is a combination. My Mama always taught me to look both ways and don't count on vehicles seeing you. If you want to stay alive it is up to you.

So walk like you are invisible and don't count on vehicles not crushing you is what needs to be broadcast. The SFMTA/ Vision Zero folks have a pedestrian and bicycle arm and are looking at this stuff. I am constantly amazed even in suburbia how oblivious people are and their expectation that a green light or that cars will stop for them because they have the right of way are.

It's the way they're being raised in cities like Albany, Berkeley and other places.

It's also the parents, I don't think that they're teaching their children to respect the streets and look both ways.

Natural selection is asserting itself.

 

[tuxumino]

Yeah, there is a wild sense of pedestrian entitlement in this City that is kind of baffling to me, so the disregard for traffic is certainly a City Wide problem. This is exacerbated by the City's apparent plan to make driving in the City as difficult as possible which promotes reckless driving. The real dangerous intersections are usually because of like I said, crazed hobos and psychotic cyclists who thinks stop signals are for other people. I did have a Lyft driver the other day though that almost plowed through a guy crossing in a crosswalk with the light in SOMA, because he was clearly driving mostly asleep. Most of SF is just giving up their cars and transferring the burden to Ride Sharing Apps.

It is a continued failure in City Planning by SF. They should have had sufficient Taxi infrastructure to support the need for on demand mobility across town. They ignored it to protect the profitability of their advocate industry (Taxi Drivers), who have caused Ride Sharing Apps to be created that have destroyed that industry in order to solve the problem. They are demanding that people use public transit, while giving free transit passes to Hobos and teenagers from the ghetto, who harass, rob, and cover the transit services in filth. Nobody wants to use those services. The Bicycle advocates are promoting a Green Agenda that gives what they want, but disregards the business needs of all the people who WORK in the City but don't live here, which is seriously like 80% of the traffic on the road. The end result is building infrastructure that does not suit the practical needs of the City while catering to a minority political ideal.

It is pretty typical California politics really. Take some cockamamie political idea, invest heavily in a system that caters to that idea, disregard the fact that the idea is unrealistic, impractical, and not what the less vocal majority want, then just sit on top of the shit show making things worse trying to jam your square peg into a round hole talking about how the roundness of the hole is the problem.

pretty accurate summation of Kali politics.

so what do you think of them getting rid of the median strip on Van Ness Ave and makin it a bus lane?

 

[m_asim]

so what do you think of them getting rid of the median strip on Van Ness Ave and makin it a bus lane?

Then where are the drunks and hobos supposed to relieve themselves at?

 

[dravnx]

I would agree that it is a combination. Speeding is an easy target to place blame on, but it is a combination. My Mama always taught me to look both ways and don't count on vehicles seeing you. If you want to stay alive it is up to you.

So walk like you are invisible and don't count on vehicles not crushing you is what needs to be broadcast. The SFMTA/ Vision Zero folks have a pedestrian and bicycle arm and are looking at this stuff. I am constantly amazed even in suburbia how oblivious people are and their expectation that a green light or that cars will stop for them because they have the right of way are.

This.
I'm flabbergasted at the way peds treat 3000# hunks of steel travelling at 35mph straight at them.

 

[NorCalAthlete]

This.
I'm flabbergasted at the way peds treat 3000# hunks of steel travelling at 35mph straight at them.

I formerly only encountered that general attitude of invincibility when I was in Korea in 2005. Koreans will just walk out into traffic, intersection or no, and put their hand up in a "halt" gesture - but without even looking at traffic. It's simply accepted and drivers will halt and let them go, even if it means slamming on their brakes. Unfortunately, a couple Korean kids tried that with an American tank convoy, and one of the tanks couldn't stop in time and ran them over.

On the flip side, if you tell a cab driver "bali bali adashi" they'll drive on sidewalks, run red lights, and do any and everything to get you to where you need to go as fast as possible. I made it from Hongdae to Camp Casey in about 45 minutes one time when we thought for sure we were gonna be locked out for curfew, so we threw the cab driver extra money and told him bali bali and held on. We made it with minutes to spare and were the last ones in the gate.

 

[carries an axe]

Asphyxiation from huffing their own farts.

 

[budman]

Asphyxiation from huffing their own farts.

Derailing the thread with public transit topics.

 

[HappyHighwayman]

I'm not going to defend shitty cyclists, they make us look bad and cause problems.

But the thing that blows my mind are people who ride their bike the wrong way down the bike path because fuck you, that's why. or peds who walk WITH the bike path ON IT in the dark, because fuck you that's why. And people who park in the bike path to drop off passengers, because fuck you, that's why.