San Francisco declares itself a pedestrian friendly city. And a great city like San Francisco should have an infrastructure which contributes to pedestrian safety. Pedestrian safety is an integral result of careful civil engineering and traffic engineering. San Francisco has a lot of pedestrians, and sadly, San Francisco has a lot of pedestrian injuries and pedestrian deaths.
San Francisco suffered its 18th pedestrian fatality for the year 2012 just recently. In the wake of these 18 pedestrian deaths, Mayor Ed Lee has announced a new San Francisco pedestrian safety plan to help reduce pedestrian accidents.
This plan is expected to be finalized and implemented in early 2013, and will move toward a goal to reduce serious or fatal pedestrian accidents by 25 percent in 2016 and 50 percent five years later, Lee said.
Mayor Lee is proud of the results from a recent redesign of the Powell Street Promenade near Union Square, where sidewalks were widened to reduce traffic speed and protect pedestrians. Lee uses this project as a model toward newer projects.
The pedestrian safety plan calls for reducing speed limits on certain streets and making improvements to various intersections, as well as using data to increase enforcement and education about particular danger zones, Lee said.
As a San Francisco Pedestrian Accident Attorney, it’s nice for me to see that the City is making a substantial effort to safeguard pedestrian lives.
So, how is San Francisco to focus attention to reduce pedestrian deaths? Efforts will be focused preliminarily on busy intersections such as Market Street, Van Ness Avenue and 19th Avenue, or at intersections that serve as off-ramps for highway traffic.
While the City’s infrastructure is to be revisited and redesigned, citizens will also receive more education on safety. The educational outreach will be taught by SFPD, and focus on motorists and pedestrians–all of which are often distracted by mobile phones or other devices while driving or walking.
The pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco is onboard with the new plan and looks forward to a strong and effective strategy. I hope this helps too as my motto is that “if it’s predictable, it’s preventable”.
Preventing injuries and especially deaths is of tantamount importance to traffic engineers and civil engineers in San Francisco. While there were 18 pedestrian fatalities this year, there were almost 900 pedestrian injuries, a staggering and embarrassing number.
This new plan was announced by the Mayor just two weeks after safety advocates questioned the slow pace of the City’s current pedestrian action plan which was put into place by Mayor Gavin Newsom in December 2010. The executive directive includes a plan to improve pedestrian safety conditions and to create a Pedestrian Safety Task Force.
About the author: Claude Wyle is an aggressive advocate for San Francisco motorists, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. Claude has decades of experience representing those harmed by the wrongful conduct of others, and, as a Bay Area personal injury attorney, has fought to protect the rights of injured adults and children throughout his legal career.
