SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco leaders and community members came together Sunday to continue to fight for safer streets on World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Victims.
Walk SF held a vigil at City Hall for the 317 victims who have died over the last 10 years, not to mention the countless more seriously injured in traffic accidents.
Jenny Yu’s mother is one of those victims.
She was walking across the street in the Richmond District when a speeding driver in an SUV made a left turn and hit her.
“She’s nowhere near who she was,” said Yu. “She survived physically, but she mentally is not the same person. Her body was flung across the road. Two separate traumatic brain surgeries, now she has major TBI, PTSD, she’s suicidal and severely depressed.”
According to Walk San Francisco, about 500 people are servery injured in these types of accidents each year.
Now, Yu says her mother needs around-the-clock care. The accident happened in 2011, and the shoes on the steps represent the deaths since 2014, all coming after Yu’s mother’s accident and the beginning of her fight for change.
“Every year it’s hard for me to see, not just the lives that were taken away but the family members and what pain they’re going through,” said Yu.
“We started counting when the city passed vision zero in 2014,” said Executive Director of Walk SF Jodie Medeiros.
Medeiros says they call the shoes “ghost shoes.” The shoes are painted white and represent every person killed in traffic crashes since city leaders committed to Vision Zero, a preventative approach to end severe and fatal crashes.
The legislation calls for slower streets, safer street designs, and outreach to educate people on street safety, but she says as the world changes, it needs to be updated.
“There’s been a lot of learning over the last 10 years so how do we have a new policy that reflects that learning and is very aggressive and ambitious because zero is the right number,” said Medeiros.
Yu adds that while legislation helps, it’s important for individual drivers to take responsibility and realize they share the streets with others.
“It’s meant for pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists, but we also have many, many cases that speeding kills,” said Yu. “They need to understand regardless of why they’re speeding they need to not speed.”
Walk SF says nationally pedestrian deaths are at their highest number since 1981, and reminders like this are needed now more than ever.
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