‘Failed vision': S.F. citizen body slams city, police for lack of progress on Vision Zero
A scathing new report asserted that 'critical failures' in traffic enforcement by San Francisco police in recent years have made city streets more dangerous, contributing to the city's failure to reach its goal of having zero traffic deaths by 2024 — which instead became the deadliest year in at least two decades.
The 43-page report from the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, a 19-member body of citizens that the city empanels each year, found that while SFMTA has implemented several engineering strategies to make streets safer, the sharp drop-off in traffic tickets 'has increased risks to all road users.'
'There's a sense of lawlessness on the city streets, due to the almost complete lack of enforcement in recent years,' jury chairperson Michael Carboy said in a statement.
In 2024, ticket numbers rose slightly, but were still only near 2020 levels — 'when nobody was on the streets,' in the words of Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who has put pressure on SFPD to ramp up enforcement.
Meanwhile, the number of traffic fatalities in San Francisco hit a high last year. The jury wrote that it was 'unclear if the high fatalities of 2024 are an outlier or a warning of what is to come.'
The number of people severely injured in car crashes was also up last year, though still below pre-pandemic levels.
San Francisco is not alone when it comes to increased traffic fatalities or decreased enforcement. The New York Times reported in 2023 that traffic deaths began rising in the U.S. around 2014, while they continued to fall in other wealthy countries. And in 2024, the Times reported that traffic enforcement fell across U.S. cities spanning a variety of enforcement strategies and regardless of police staffing.
The Times also pointed to several societal changes contributing to more dangerous streets. Those included vehicles becoming heavier, larger and more powerful, the use of smartphones by distracted drivers and pedestrians and even the uniquely American pervasiveness of automatic transmissions, which require less attentiveness from drivers.
For its part, SFPD has previously pointed to staffing shortages, increased paperwork thanks to a 2015 state law and pandemic-related changes as reasons behind the drop, though traffic unit commander Nicole Jones said in the December hearing that these factors alone could not fully explain the decline, the Chronicle previously reported.
The decline in staffing from 2016 to 2022 was modest (13%) in comparison to the decline in traffic tickets (95%). In the traffic unit specifically, staffing dropped 30% over the same period, according to SFPD.
The civil grand jury agreed, saying that the decline instead 'reflects a deeper cultural issue within SFPD: traffic enforcement is not prioritized or expected by leadership, and officers face no accountability for neglecting it.'
'Just like trends in crime, trends in traffic deaths and severe injuries are a police responsibility and a meaningful indicator of police effectiveness,' it said, calling for 'clear enforcement goals.'
SFPD spokesperson Paulina Henderson pointed to the uptick in tickets issued so far this year as evidence of several new traffic enforcement strategies, including placing high-visibility officers at select intersections to deter bad behavior and training officers on other units to use lidar for speed detection.
'SFPD is committed to continuing increasing enforcement in the months and years to come,' Henderson said.
The report did not pin all the blame on SFPD. While the jury praised SFMTA's efforts to make streets safer, including interventions like daylighting, turn restrictions, protected bike lanes and speed limit changes, it said the agency could be more efficient and proactive, rather than reacting to tragedies.
Marta Lindsey, the communications director of WalkSF, a pedestrian advocacy group, said that she hopes the report inspires the city and the mayor to recommit to Vision Zero, which expired as an official policy in 2024. In her view, the findings highlight that street safety 'isn't just a one agency problem' to be shouldered by SFPD or SFMTA alone.
The failure to reach zero traffic deaths 'isn't Vision Zero's fault,' she said. 'It's a failure of the execution.'
The grand jury agreed.
'At the end of the Vision Zero decade, San Francisco needs to redouble its efforts to make meaningful progress on street safety,' Investigation Committee Chair Katherine Blumberg said in a statement.
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