Crackdown is welcome

Starting Saturday, San Francisco city officials will begin a yearlong enforcement campaign on speeding drivers. We have just one question: what took them so long?

The campaign, which is part of San Francisco’s ambitious Vision Zero program to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, won’t be politically popular. By adding enforcement to a dozen of San Francisco’s high-speeding corridors, San Francisco officials will slow down traffic in a city that’s grown more congested in recent years. San Francisco drivers are already frustrated with the slow speed of traffic, and increased enforcement will make them more frustrated. It will also save lives. San Francisco had as many people killed while walking and biking in 2015 as were killed in 2014, and 26 percent of those fatal collisions were the result of driver speeding.

Since more than 70 percent of severe and fatal accidents happen on just 12 percent of San Francisco streets, it makes sense for officials to concentrate police resources on the city’s most dangerous corridors. The list includes some notorious speed zones, like Howard Street from Embarcadero to South Van Ness and Sunset Boulevard between Lake Merced and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

While they’re at it, we urge San Francisco police to crack down on a few other bad driving habits that have proliferated lately.

One of the top things slowing traffic down in San Francisco right now has to be the phenomenon of “blocking the box,” or remaining in intersections and crosswalks after the light has changed from green to red. This behavior jeopardizes pedestrian safety and paralyzes traffic.

San Francisco has cracked down on box-blocking in the past. From the looks of our streets today, it needs to do so again.