Change on the streets

If you are a Walk SF member, and especially if you spoke up in response to the terrible video of the man being hit in broad daylight in the crosswalk in the Tenderloin, thank you. Your voice is making change.

Walk SF met with Police Chief Greg Suhr and the Mayor’s staff at City Hall, and gave them the many emails we’d received. The police, in response to those emails, had cited the driver — something that would not ordinarily have occurred. Walk SF asked for that to change: for drivers who injure pedestrians to be cited immediately. Walk SF also asked for clear, accountable enforcement of the laws that protect us all when we walk. Police should be going to the most dangerous locations and ticketing the most dangerous behaviors: speeding, failing to yield to pedestrians, red light running, and running stop signs. Walk SF asked if the Police Department needs more tools to keep people safe in the crosswalk, and offered help.

Flickr/Marcin Wichary

It was a good meeting, and we drafted a statement as a result, which is going through the channels of officialdom. Stay tuned.

And again, thank you for speaking up for safer streets.

In the meantime, something very similar is going on in New York. Perhaps this is an idea whose time has (finally) come.