East Palo Alto officials added signs and flashing lights in this crosswalk after 6-year-old Sioreli Torres was killed in 2011. photo by Noah Berger

Joseph Molinaro was not jaywalking when he was hit and knocked 30 feet on Sept. 26, 2009. The 85-year-old was in a crosswalk. Investigators found that the driver’s failure to observe the pedestrian’s right of way was the primary cause of the fatal collision.

But Pittsburg police did not give the woman driving a ticket, and the Contra Costa County district attorney did not file criminal charges.

Sixty percent of the 238 motorists found to be at fault or suspected of a crime faced no criminal charges during the five-year period, CIR found in its analysis of thousands of pages of police and court records from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties.

When drivers did face criminal charges, punishment often was light. Licenses rarely were taken away. Of those charged, less than 60 percent had their driving privileges suspended or revoked for even one day, an automatic penalty in drunk driving arrests.

Forty percent of those convicted faced no more than a day in jail; 13 drivers were jailed for more than a year. By contrast, those charged in accidental shootings often serve lengthy jail terms, according to media reports.

Walkers are perhaps the most unprotected users of the transportation system. The human body is no match for 3,000 pounds of speeding steel. Autopsy reports routinely describe blood-soaked clothing, fractured skulls, cracked ribs and broken limbs. In the Bay Area, minorities make up a majority of the dead, and the elderly are more likely to die walking than people from other age groups.

Families of the victims and advocates say that until there are more serious consequences for drivers who kill pedestrians, the deaths will continue.

“If there isn’t a penalty, the message is that it’s all right to run people over and kill them,” said Elizabeth Stampe, executive director and the sole paid employee of nonprofit advocacy group Walk San Francisco. “There’s a joke from New York that maybe isn’t very funny: If you want to kill someone and get away with it, use a car – and that’s true here as well.”

read more: center of investigative reporting, 29.04.13.

Sloat Boulevard at Vale Avenue and Forest View Drive where a 17-year-old girl, Hanren Chang, was struck and killed.

Mayor Ed Lee has ordered physical improvements and strategic moves designed to make the walking environment safer. Some of the work is happening already:

Forty-four miles of the most accident-prone streets will be upgraded, 5 miles a year through 2021.

Where appropriate, many of the busiest intersections will be “bulbed-out” — sidewalks at street corners will be widened to make it harder for drivers to make turns at unsafe speeds and shorten the distance walkers must cover to make it to the other side of the street. Other safety measures: highly visible crosswalks, wider sidewalks, lengthening the time of “walk” signals (just a couple of seconds would make a big difference), walk signals that tell pedestrians how much time they have and audible walk signals.

The duration of walk signals will be increased at 800 intersections — the city found that the average pedestrian walks more slowly than the length of time the signal says it’s OK to walk, and in a city where speed limits often are ignored, that’s dangerous.

Efforts will be made to improve safety around schools and senior centers — kids and seniors are among the most vulnerable pedestrians. Crosswalks will get heightened visibility at schools (bright yellow) and senior centers (bright white). Walk signals will be timed to the walking pace of those folks — children and the elderly just walk more slowly than everybody else.

sfgate, 10.05.13.

wtf is “bright white”, though?!

walking on the sidewalk in chinatown.

goddamn, car doors are dangerous.

and this highlights that there indeed is a sidewalk door zone, in addition to bike lane door zones.

Staff and students over at Sunnyside Elementary School are struggling with the loss of 60-year-old Becky Lee, a popular custodian who was known as “Ms. Becky” to the kids at school.

Lee was walking in a crosswalk when she was hit by a pickup truck last Wednesday at the intersection of Judson Avenue and Edna Street, just a few blocks away from where she worked at Sunnyside Elementary.

She was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The 42-year-old woman who was driving the truck wasn’t arrested and remained on the scene where she cooperated with the cops. Police are still trying to determine how the collision occurred.

sfweekly, 17.04.13.