Advocates Rally at Fatal Crash Site in SoMa, Demanding Safer Streets

A week after a 4-year-old girl in a stroller was struck and killed by a car just blocks from Oracle Park in San Francisco, over a hundred advocates on Tuesday evening gathered at the crosswalk where the crash occurred, many pushing empty strollers and chanting “never again,” demanding local leaders take immediate action to improve pedestrian safety in the city.

Last week’s tragic incident — at the intersection of Fourth and King streets in the South of Market neighborhood — marks the 11th pedestrian death in San Francisco so far this year, according to the advocacy group Walk San Francisco, which organized the rally. Last year, 20 people on foot were struck and killed by vehicles. At Tuesday’s rally and memorial, Walk SF Executive Director Jodie Medeiros called on the city to take swift, decisive action to prevent future tragedies.

“We are all here today to make sure that something finally and truly changes,” she said. “Our streets are designed for people, for people’s safety, for safe streets.”

The rally comes a day after Mayor London Breed instructed the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to quickly eliminate one right-turn lane at the Fourth and King street intersection and change the turn signal from green to yellow, among other safety measures. Breed also directed the agency to submit a plan to markedly improve safety conditions at all intersections listed in the city’s High Injury Network, before the end of 2024. Possible safety measures would likely include allowing pedestrians more time to cross streets, increasing crosswalk visibility by using thick vertical striping and installing barriers that would force turning cars to slow down.

“This is a heartbreaking incident that took the life of an innocent child, leaving a family changed forever and our community deeply saddened. I know I speak for every San Franciscan in continuing to hold this family in our thoughts and prayers,” Breed said in a statement. “Our streets and roads in San Francisco should be safe for everyone to enjoy without feeling their lives are in danger, which is why I have directed the SFMTA to take immediate action to prevent this from happening again.”

The incident occurred in the early evening of Aug. 15, when a silver SUV in one of two right-turn lanes, plowed into the girl, who was being pushed in a stroller by her parents. The girl, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead after arriving at San Francisco General Hospital. Her father, who was also struck by the vehicle, suffered serious injuries.

The driver was identified as a 71-year-old woman, who police arrested for vehicular manslaughter and three counts of failure to yield to pedestrians, according to the department. Police said she was cooperative and did not appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency chief Jeffrey Tumlin addressed demonstrators on Tuesday, pledging that his agency’s rapid response team would complete the safety improvements to the intersection within three weeks — which he said would also include removing one of the two right turn lanes.

“No family should ever have to endure a tragedy like [what] happened here a week ago,” said Jeffrey Tumlin, SFMTA’s transportation director during the rally. “In fact, it should just be a basic fact of life in any normal city that any family should feel safe and comfortable bringing a child out in every street in San Francisco.”

But some advocates said that while the city’s action is a good first step, it doesn’t go far enough to ensure the safety of pedestrians crossing many of the city’s most dangerous streets.

“The city needs to move quickly to not just fix [the Fourth and King street] intersection, but all 900 intersections on the High Injury Network,” Janelle Wong, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told demonstrators. “There are over 30 neighborhood streets in San Francisco that feed into a freeway entrance or an exit. And these streets need to be treated as neighborhood streets. Designed for people’s safety is the priority, and not traffic flow.”

Shortly after Tuesday’s rally, a group of activists took matters into their own hands and used traffic cones and other barriers to shut down the turning lane where the accident occurred.

“Today at the vigil, SFMTA said it would take 3 weeks to do a ‘quick build’ to make the intersection safer,” the group Safe Street Rebel said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “That’s too long to wait. So we did our own quick build tonight and closed one of the turn lanes.”

Walk SF has previously called attention to this and other intersections in the city that it says are among the most dangerous for pedestrians. The group leads the Vision Zero Coalition, which includes over 35 nonprofit organizations representing communities across the city most impacted by traffic deaths.

The Vision Zero plan, which was adopted as a policy by the city in 2014, calls for using speed cameras, building protected bike lanes, and designing transportation systems that reduce the risk of severe injury or death.

Despite the effort, 39 people were killed in traffic crashes in San Francisco in 2022 — including pedestrians, drivers and bikers — the highest number of deaths since 2007.