Monday, June 26, 2000
Los Angeles Times

Deaths, Injuries Cloud 'Walkers' Paradise'

Safety: Eighteen pedestrians have been killed, 300 hurt since January in San Francisco. Police and city step up preventive campaigns.

By JOHN M. GLIONNA, Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO--Late at night, when the chaos of the city streets
subsides, Ken Kelton whips his red truck to the curb at an offending
intersection.

Working quickly, he throws down a plywood stencil and spray-paints
another street memorial to a fallen pedestrian. Resembling the chalked body
outlines at crime scenes, the life-size white sketch proclaims the victim's
name and accident date.

"Pedestrian deaths are always cleaned up within hours--the body's gone,
the blood washed away--like we don't want to know," said 51-year-old
Kelton, a building contractor by day and urban guerrilla after dark. "This
way, people remember. They're reminded that this is a dangerous place."
The city known worldwide as a walker's paradise has never seemed so
dangerous. Since January, 18 pedestrians have been killed on San Francisco
streets and more than 300 have been injured--setting a course to easily
exceed last year's death toll of 28.

Victims have been hit in crosswalks, while waiting for buses, when
dashing into traffic. The youngest--a 3-year-old boy--was struck by a cab.
The oldest was a 98-year-old man run down by a trolley car.

The deaths have moved police to step up enforcement and prompted city
officials to hold a recent emergency pedestrian safety summit.
Supervisor Mabel Teng has vowed to use the summit proposals--such as
narrowing streets and increasing fines levied on motorists--to create a safety
master plan.

And the San Francisco agency that created the national "Got Milk?" ads
is devising a pedestrian safety awareness campaign.
"I'm calling it the 'Got Brakes?' campaign," Teng said. "San Francisco is
no longer a walkable city, because people have to take risks just to cross the
street. We've got to change the behavior of both walkers and drivers. Until
then, the streets will not be safe."

Studies show that San Francisco--where about 10% of people walk to
work--has the highest pedestrian injury rate in California. Nationwide, about
13% of traffic fatalities involve pedestrians; in San Francisco the rate hovers
around 50%, studies show.

The city's pedestrian death rate is second only to New York City's,
officials say.

"It's alarming," said James Corless, California director of the Surface
Transportation Policy Project, a nonprofit agency that promotes more
balanced transportation policies. "It's gotten to the point where people are
literally afraid to step off the curb."

San Francisco police reviewed 286 car-pedestrian incidents this year,
blaming motorists in 123 and finding that 91 were the fault of pedestrians. In
the others, the responsibility was unclear.

Experts say there is a third culprit missing from that formula: the streets
themselves.

"There's a lot of finger-pointing going on over who's responsible for all the
accidents, the walker or the driver. But the truth is that traffic engineers can
share some of the blame," Corless said.

In San Francisco, there are many blind intersections where vehicles often
barrel over hills. And the loss of downtown's Embarcadero Freeway, torn
down after the 1989 earthquake, has turned many downtown surface streets
into urban expressways.

The city's new Internet commerce has added to the problem. Because
most products bought online need to be delivered the old-fashioned way--by
truck--double-parked delivery vehicles routinely clog downtown streets, city
officials say.

Residents and city officials agree that San Francisco needs to rethink the
very makeup of many streets. In the 1960s and '70s, traffic engineers
believed that the fastest way to move vehicles was along wide one-way
thoroughfares with few trees or impediments to block a motorist's vision.
"Back then, engineers figured pedestrians would soon be a thing of the
past, that people wouldn't need to walk," Corless said. "In fact, until the
1990s, the city engineer's bible put out by the American Assn. of State
Highway and Transportation officials referred to pedestrians as 'traffic flow
interruptions.' That's how car-centric the thinking was."

Now, Teng says, city officials are exploring such "car-calming" street
design changes as speed humps, traffic circles and "bulb-outs," or extensions
of the sidewalk into the street to create better visibility for both drivers and
pedestrians.

Mayor Willie Brown plans to expand the city's red light photo
enforcement program, which snaps pictures of violators, and begin several
pedestrian-friendly projects, such as countdown crosswalk signals that
inform walkers how much time they have in an intersection before the light
changes.

The downtown bedlam is made worse by other factors officials cannot
control. Many busy, stressed pedestrians absent-mindedly talk on cell
phones. Motorists take chances behind the wheel.
"It's a crowded urban environment with too many people and too many
cars," said Michael Radetsky, an injury prevention specialist for the city
Department of Public Health. "Frustrated drivers are often stopped at every
light on clogged streets. So they tend to race between intersections."
And many run stop signs.

Just ask Alvin Ja, whose 85-year-old mother was killed last month when
a sport utility vehicle did just that and plowed into her motorized wheelchair
as Mabel Ja cruised across a crosswalk, smashing her skull.
"People drive too aggressively," Alvin Ja said. "They whip around
corners, make turns into narrow streets, assuming there won't be anything
there. The whole culture says, 'Screw the other guy. I'll take whatever
shortcuts I have to, to get where I'm going.' "

Every day when he sees a reckless driver, Ja thinks of his mother, who
for decades ran a Chinatown clothing store. "Irresponsible driving killed my
mother," he said. "It disgusts me."

That same disgust has led Kelton to stencil scores of body outlines at
scenes of fatalities. Working at odd hours, he uses orange barricades and
flashing red lights to appear like a city worker and avoid an arrest for
vandalism.

But city officials have so far looked the other way, even leaving the white
body outlines on the street long after Kelton is gone, as long as there are no
complaints.

One city traffic official said the stencils are the kind of graphic reminder of
mortality that pedestrians need to see every day.

"In many people's minds, these accidents are all so isolated," Kelton said.
"I'm just trying to connect the dots."

Michael Kemmitt also has seen too many pedestrians die. The
commanding officer for the San Francisco Police Department's traffic unit, he
visits most pedestrian accident scenes and remembers one recent week in
which he began to question his sanity.

The police captain went to where a 50-year-old teaching assistant was
struck on his walk to school; where a 69-year-old man was dragged by a
bus and lost his left hand; where a 71-year-old woman was hit and killed by
a water delivery truck; where a young boy was critically injured as he dashed
across the street near his school.

"It was just one after the other," Kemmitt recalled with a shudder. "And
you began to wonder 'Is this ever going to end?' "