Fatalities on streets increase
Bay Area streets and highways are not only getting busier, they’re becoming deadlier, particularly for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Fatal collisions in the nine Bay Area counties increased 43 percent from 2010 to 2016, while injuries were up 25 percent, according to data recently released by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. In 2016, crashes killed 455 people and injured 2,089, the highest totals since 2010.
The upward trend follows economic and population growth in the Bay Area — and a corresponding surge in the number of people driving.
The Bay Area statistics mirror
current state and national trends that show driving becoming more dangerous, according to traffic safety experts.
“We are going in the wrong direction,” said Tom Maguire, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s sustainable streets director, referring to the national trend. “The number of deaths (nationally) is increasing more rapidly than growth in driving.”
The rise in fatal crashes parallels the Bay Area’s economic boom since the recession that began a decade ago. Death rates on the region’s streets and highways dropped sharply from 2006 to 2010 as the economy plummeted along with employment rates.
“During the recession, traffic decreased and we were hopeful that we were hitting record lows,” said Stephanie Mak, an MTC transportation planner. “But as the economy has recovered, the number of crashes has gone back up.”
Although more people are driving and commuting longer distances, the number of Bay Area crashes has outpaced economic indicators such as the cumulative number of miles driven or the growth in population, transportation officials say.
In San Francisco, where the city’s Vision Zero program seeks to eliminate traffic deaths in the city by 2024, each collision is analyzed along with the trends and potentially fixable problems. The leading causes of San Francisco’s crashes, Maguire said, are excess speed, red-light running, failure to yield, illegal turns and drivers ignoring stop signs.
Among the nine Bay Area counties, Napa, Sonoma and Solano have the most collisions per capita. Rural counties, where people often drive faster, typically have higher fatal crash rates, Cochran said.
San Francisco, as is often the case, is unusual — in terms of traffic fatality and injury rates, Goodwin said. It has the region’s lowest per capita fatal accident rate. That’s probably because of the large number of people who ride transit, walk and ride bikes.
But those means of getting around can also be dangerous. The city has one of the higher fatality rates per mile driven. Bay Area-wide, roughly onethird of all traffic fatalities involve bicyclists and pedestrians. In San Francisco, they account for 62 percent of traffic deaths.
San Francisco, however, is also leading the way in reducing and, it hopes, eliminating traffic deaths. It was the first Bay Area city, in 2014, to declare itself a Vision Zero city with a goal of zero traffic deaths within 10 years. Since then, the city has made physical changes to streets, crossings and sidewalks, engaged in education campaigns, and stressed enforcement on the deadliest behaviors and on the most dangerous streets.