Runner who was nearly killed by driver in 2020 completes half marathon around S.F. in push for safer streets.
On Sunday, Julie Nicholson ran for the first time through the spot in the Panhandle where a car had nearly killed her.
She was jogging on Jan. 4 last year when a car speeding north on Masonic Avenue blew through a red light, hit another car and careened into the park — straight at her. She flew 30 feet, landing with a thud. She assumed she was seconds from death but remembers thinking, “OK, I lived.”
She broke her neck and her back, and her head was bleeding. She said she believes the driver, who stopped and apologized, got off with just a citation. What followed was a grueling eight months of recovery, but she’s OK now. And on Sunday, she embarked on a miraculous endeavor: a halfmarathon along some of San Francisco’s most dangerous streets, ending at that same spot in the Panhandle. She hadn’t had the
nerve to run there since the crash.
“I feel a sense of privilege and gratitude and responsibility that I am healthy and able to do this,” the 55yearold Mills College professor of early education said outside her home on Alpine Terrace before she began the run at 8 a.m.
She sported black runner’s shorts
and a bright yellow shirt, the same yellow as the hearts and flowers she’d leave along the 13.1 mile route in remembrance of people who lost their lives after being hit by a car.
San Francisco’s streets are crowded and poorly designed, and even the simplest changes to road infra
structure often don’t happen until somebody dies or is seriously injured. Many drivers treat the city streets like highways and figure getting to their destination as quickly as possible is allimportant, even if it risks somebody else’s safety. Police rarely enforce traffic violations.
Strangely, the state controls cities’ abilities to make proactive changes like lowering speed limits and installing automated speed enforcement cameras to ticket those blasting through our streets. Legislators are trying yet again to get that changed in Sacramento this year after previous nobrainer attempts failed. Isn’t it interesting how our supposedly progressive state does so many things so backward?
Back in 2014, San Francisco officials, rattled by the previous year’s 34 traffic deaths, pledged to end traffic fatalities within a decade, adopting a plan they called Vision Zero. But three years from the deadline, there are almost as many deaths as when the initiative began.
Last year, despite people shelteringinplace and the roads far emptier than normal, 29 people died on city streets. No year since the adoption of Vision Zero has seen fewer than 20 deaths.
And that doesn’t count those who survive being hit by cars — sometimes with their lives permanently damaged. Walk SF, the pedestrian advocacy group that organized Nicholson’s run, says three people on average are injured in traffic in the city every day. And every 15 hours, somebody is injured so badly that an ambulance whisks them to San Francisco General Hospital, the city’s only trauma center.
Still, of the 168 miles of San Francisco roadway identified in 2014 as extremely dangerous, just 82 miles have been fixed. Seven years later, 86 of these spots remain untouched — and there’s not even a plan to improve them.
That’s why it was important and meaningful for a dozen runners, also in yellow shirts, to join Nicholson for her run. Some, like her, were survivors. Highlighting their own injuries and others’ devastating deaths is crucial to ensuring the longtime problem is on City Hall’s priority list.
The runners stopped first at Oak and Baker streets to place a bouquet for Norman Tanner, a 60yearold advocate for the Black LGBTQ community, who was hit and killed there on Oct. 3,
2018. A witness said the driver pulled over, peered at Tanner’s body, got back in her car and fled. She has not been apprehended by police, but here’s hoping karma finds her.
The group then stopped in front of City Hall where Nicholson held a sign reading, “Dear city leaders: I’m one of 3,500 people severely injured in crashes since S.F. adopted Vision Zero. Please do much more to protect us.”
Next, it was on to Geary and Gough streets to leave a bouquet for Mark
Berman, who was struck and killed there August 11, 2020. Raja Whitfield, 26, was booked on charges of manslaughter, reckless driving, speeding and entering a crosswalk on a red light.
Whitfield had previously bragged on social media that he’s a “street racer” and had posted a video of himself driving 100 mph in a school zone. Officials said he was recording himself speeding through a red light at the time of Berman’s death. Whitfield was in custody until recently
when he was released to a residential treatment facility on home detention with a GPS tracking device.
Berman was a 50yearold dad of two young kids out for a morning walk. Jodie Medeiros, executive director of Walk SF, cried as she recounted the details of his death and said his family “is wrecked.”
Then it was on to 18th Avenue and California Street, where a car hit and killed Zhao Guan, 64, on Feb. 26, 2019, as she walked to babysit her grandchildren. The driver didn’t stop.
At 38th Avenue and Geary Boulevard, Nicholson met Sandee Holman, the sister of Lawrence Holman, a longtime Chronicle street vendor who was struck and killed by a driver on Dec. 1. Sandee cried as she recalled that her brother liked to leave the chaos of his singleroomoccupancy hotel in the Mission to ride the bus to the coast to go for long, quiet walks.
Their parents died a long time ago, and another brother died in May.
“That was the end of my family pretty much,” she said.
As the Walk SF team tied a bouquet and card to a post on a median, a driver whizzed past and honked angrily, coming within inches of Holman.
Then Nicholson and the others ran to John F. Kennedy Drive and 30th Avenue in Golden Gate Park. That’s where Heather Miller, 41, was killed by a hitandrun driver while riding her bike on June 22, 2016. The driver, 19yearold Nicky Garcia, was later arrested and charged with murder, vehicular manslaughter, and hit and run. Garcia has been in custody since his arrest and is awaiting trial. It’s unclear why it has taken so long to resolve the case.
The halfmarathon concluded with a far less nervejangling run east down JFK Drive, the stretch of road that closed to cars during the pandemic and must remain closed if the city truly cares about the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists.
Finally, Nicholson — by that point sweating, panting and looking exhausted — jogged slowly into the Panhandle. A crowd cheered her on and held a yellow finish line for her to bust through.
As she caught her breath, Nicholson said she was ecstatic to have run farther than she ever had before and to reclaim the area that had been so traumatizing. But she was gutted by all the stories of death on San Francisco’s streets that she learned about along the way.
“Those were people who deserved to be here today doing things we all deserve to do — walking and biking and babysitting your grandkids,” she said. “And life was taken from them in a second.”
That was three days ago. Nine more people have probably been struck by cars on the city’s streets since then. How many more are we willing to accept?