Zero

May, 2019: the Ride of Silence for traffic casualties (Chron)

Perhaps you haven't heard about Vision Zero, San Francisco's 2014 action plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024. It's not surprising that there's been little publicity: [bold added]

We’re five years into the 10-year goal. And yet just two-thirds into 2019, 22 people have lost their lives on the city’s streets. That’s one less than died in all of 2018 and two more than died in all of 2017. We’re on pace to surpass the 31 deaths in 2014, the year Vision Zero began....

One major factor is a dramatic drop in tickets issued to drivers by San Francisco police — a neglect that could be explained by too many unfilled vacancies in the department’s traffic division and ever-changing leadership of the crucial unit.

New figures obtained by The Chronicle show the San Francisco Police Department is ticketing far fewer drivers for illegal behavior behind the wheel than it did the year Vision Zero was adopted.

Ticket-writing for the most dangerous driving behaviors has fallen dramatically:

Vision Zero directs the Police Department to focus its enforcement on the five most dangerous driving behaviors: speeding, failing to stop at a red light, failing to stop at a stop sign, failing to give pedestrians the right of way, and failing to yield to pedestrians while turning.

The number of citations for those specific behaviors are also distressingly low. Of all the citations handed out in 2014, 30,613 were for those five violations. While that number climbed at first, it fell off dramatically in 2018. Last year, police officers handed out just 20,154 tickets for those five violations. In the first half of this year, they handed out just 10,267.

That's what one gets when politicians--in fact, any leaders--make big promises and don't put their time and more money behind them: zero.