Ceremony remembers lives lost in crashes
The steps of San Francisco’s City Hall were lined with 187 pairs of shoes Sunday afternoon, each pair representing a Bay Area resident whose life ended in a traffic crash.
In a solemn ceremony — part of a World Day of Remembrance — pedestrian advocates gathered to recite the names of all those killed by cars in the past six years. The 100 or so mourners who gathered placed flowers by the shoes in memory of those who had been hit by cars.
Some of the victims were on skateboards, some were on bikes. Most were walking. Every 15 hours on average, someone is taken to San Francisco General Hospital after being severely injured in a traffic crash. So far this year, 21 people have been killed in traffic crashes in San Francisco.
Two of those in attendance were Joe Martinez and Alvin Lester. They live hundreds of miles apart — Lester in San Francisco’s Bayview district and Martinez in Fresno — but said they are bound together by the fact that their sons, both age 21, were killed while walking.
Lester said his son Arman, who was studying computer science at
City College, was in a crosswalk on Third Street heading home from work when a speeding car plowed into him, killing him instantly.
Martinez said his son Paul was coming home from his cousin’s house in Fresno when he was hit by a car traveling 54 mph in a 40 mph zone. Only 10% of people hit by a cars going 20 mph are killed. That goes up to 40% if the car is going 30 mph.
Lester helped start San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, which put on the event Sunday with Walk San Francisco. The groups are calling on city leaders to take three specific actions with the Slow Our Streets program.
Lester said he has embraced pedestrian safety both as a way to honor his son and to make city streets safer for others.
“It’s been helpful,” he said. “Part of the reason why I’m here is this is my therapy.”
The two organizations are asking San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director Jeffrey Tumlin to lower speed limits on highinjury streets such as Bush, Sunnydale, Geary, 19th Avenue and Thomas More Way. They want to introduce a comprehensive, datadriven speed management program. They are calling for the city to expand “left turn calming” to slow vehicles and better protect pedestrians in the crosswalk.
Some of those in attendance Sunday were victims who survived their runins with reckless motorists. Julie Nicholson said she was in the panhandle nearly a year ago when a car ran a red light and collided with another vehicle. Both cars crashed onto the panhandle and hit Nicholson, who was out for a jog celebrating the end of her husband’s chemotherapy. She broke her neck and back, and recovery took seven months.
“My alive day — the day I should have died — is coming up Jan. 4,” she said. “I plan on doing a half marathon and stopping every mile to remember someone who was less lucky than I was.”
The folks who were honored Sunday wore many different types of shoes — flats and high heels, Doc Martens and basketball sneakers. But Walk San Francisco Executive Director Jodie Medeiros said that they had one thing in common.
“These are people whose death was unnecessary,” she said. “None of these people needed to die.”