Frustrated, angry and endangered, pedestrians rally for safety after four-year-old’s death

Reporting from FOURTH AND KING

Stuffed animals, strollers and cards of condolence were lined up at the intersection of Fourth and King streets where a four-year-old child last week was killed after being struck by a vehicle while being pushed in a stroller by her parents.

Pedestrian safety advocates said they are fed up with the the inaction of city leaders to install street safety improvements at dangerous intersections and corridors throughout San Francisco, including at Fourth and King streets.

Advocates protested Tuesday night at the intersection that claimed the life of the four-year-old, calling on Mayor London Breed and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees parking and traffic in the city, to quickly make safety improvements at the intersection and also for the rest of the city’s known dangerous corridors.

Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk San Francisco, said:

“We should be able to cross safely, not only here at Fourth and King, but in every intersection in San Francisco. I’m here to call on our city leaders. This is your wake-up call. This is it.”

Fourth and King streets is on the city’s high-injury network, which is the 12 percent of streets known to city leaders where 68 percent of severe and fatal crashes occur.

Last year, the city had a total of 39 traffic fatalities, marking the highest death toll since 2014 when the city launched the ambitious “Vision Zero” initiative — a pledge to eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2024. As of July 2023, 13 traffic fatalities had occurred in San Francisco this year.

Ahead of the rally, Breed Monday announced that the SFMTA will make changes to the intersection, including removing one of the southbound right-turn lanes on Fourth Street that turns onto King Street and changing the color of the traffic signal when drivers make the right turn.

Instead of drivers seeing a green light to proceed, drivers will see a yellow arrow to remind drivers that they must yield to pedestrians, city officials said.

SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin said the changes will happen over the next three weeks.

A group called Safe Street Rebel said on X that three weeks is too long for the SFMTA to act and installed posts to close one of the right-turn lanes following the memorial.

On Friday, the SFMTA posted that they installed their own posts to reduce the right-turn lanes from two to one.

Additionally, the mayor directed the SFMTA to assess other intersections in the city with double-turn lanes for identical safety treatments. SFMTA Streets Division Director Tom Maguire said there were about 30 intersections similar to Fourth and King streets.

Breed is also asking the SFMTA to provide a timeline and plan on how they will install street safety measures on the rest of the high-injury network.

Lian Chang with Walk San Francisco said that what the city proposed for the Fourth and King streets intersection was not enough. Chang proposed that pedestrians be able to cross the street with a dedicated light when no vehicle traffic is moving:

“They need to be able to see a red so that pedestrian can cross safely.”

Maguire said the upcoming changes to the interaction are“by no means the final plan”but that the SFMTA wanted to get a plan in place that could be installed in a matter of weeks, adding:

“We’re pretty confident this is going to make a big difference.”

Walk San Francisco also wants the SFMTA to have a plan within two months for how they will make improvements on streets on the high-injury network that the SFMTA has yet to install safety street measures.

Amanda Eaken, who chairs the SFMTA Board of Directors, said she plans to bring a policy for the board’s consideration to accelerate the mayor’s requests and to further explore and implement other measures, such as restricting drivers from making a right turn on a red light and limiting left turns.

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.