A 41-year-old man was fatally struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run crash on March 2nd in SF’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
San Francisco has already documented an unusually high number of pedestrian deaths for 2024. (Even one life lost to a vehicle is more than should be accepted, but we digress.) Before March 2nd, three pedestrians had died on San Francisco roads due to collisions with vehicles; the first of this year involved a 72-year-old man leaving a senior community center in Golden Gate Park; the man was fatally struck crossing the notoriously dangerous intersection at Fulton Street and Arguello Boulevard.
Heartbroken to share that another pedestrian life has been lost on our streets, this time at Golden Gate Avenue & Hyde Street in the Tenderloin.
We stand with @BayAreaFSS ready to support the victim's loved ones.
Our statement: https://t.co/qZzud5htcI
— Walk San Francisco (@walksf) March 7, 2024
Last week, yet another pedestrian death was recorded in San Francisco this year when an adult man was killed in a hit-and-run collision at the intersection of Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street.
Per a press release from the pedestrian safety nonprofit Walk San Francisco, this is now the second hit-and-run pedestrian fatality this year — the first occurring on February 8th when 32-year-old David Bridges Jr. was hit and killed at 6th and Bryant Streets.
As we’ve waxed time and time again, Vision Zero SF — the City’s road safety policy and council that aims to bolster safety and livability in San Francisco streets — records around 30 pedestrian fatalities each year. On average, another 500 or so people are severely injured as a result of pedestrian-related vehicle crashes annually, as well.
Golden Gate Avenue and Hyde Street are each on the City’s “high-injury network” — the collection of San Francisco streets that account for nearly 70% of all recorded traffic crashes in the city — and the intersection of the two is notoriously dangerous for walkers, bikers, skateboarders… and, frankly, anyone not encased in a speed cocoon of steel and glass.
Both roads were updated within the past few years to reduce driver speeds, with the City lowering them to 20 MPH in 2021. The intersection also now has pedestrian safety zones, no-turn-on-red signs, and high-visibility-painted safety zones.
“We are grateful to the SFMTA for bringing many safety improvements to this intersection and throughout the Tenderloin,” says Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, in the same press release mentioned prior. “This is a neighborhood where for decades, the streets were designed to prioritize fast-moving traffic over the safety of the people living here. Many positive changes have happened in recent years, and crash rates have gone down. But the reality is many drivers use this neighborhood as a cut-through, and drive too fast and recklessly.”
However, humans will be humans (read: reckless drivers will be reckless drivers), and speeding through the interesting is all too common, which has caused a life to be lost; the identity victim involved in the fatal hit and run on March 2nd has yet to be released
In 2023, seventeen people were killed while simply walking in San Francisco; across the country, pedestrian deaths are at a 40-year historic high.
