San Francisco Has Tried to Make its Streets Safer for Pedestrians – Has it Worked?

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After a decade of Vision Zero, the effort that aimed to end traffic fatalities and severe injuries, San Francisco saw a drastic decrease in 2025 traffic deaths. To replace the expiring initiative, the city passed the Street Safety Act. However, a spate of recent traffic fatalities in San Francisco has residents on edge, and as pedestrians made up six of the seven victims, some activists say the city isn’t moving fast enough. We talk about what can be done to reduce pedestrian deaths and injuries and check in on San Francisco’s progress. Guests: Jodie Medeiros, executive director, Walk SF David Zipper, contributing writer, Bloomberg; co-host, "Look Both Ways with David & Wes" podcast Viktoriya Wise, director, Streets Division, SFMTA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:41.2	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:44.2	You look at a chart of per capita traffic deaths since the year 2000 for wealthier countries,
0:49.4	like, say, South Korea, Australia, Canada, the UK, the U.S., pretty much everywhere.
0:53.7	You see massive declines from the UK, the U.S., pretty much everywhere, you see massive declines
0:55.8	from the turn of the millennium until 2014.
1:00.0	But after that, something major changes.
1:02.3	While the rest of those other countries have seen traffic deaths continue to go down,
1:07.4	our traffic fatalities start to go up so that by now we're a clear outlier.
1:13.6	That's a national problem, but you might imagine San Francisco would be better.
1:17.5	After all, the city committed to Vision Zero back in 2014, a concept that originated in Sweden,
1:23.1	set out the goal to end traffic deaths.
1:25.9	And yes, San Francisco's per capita traffic fatalities
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