Pedestrian accidents are common throughout the state of California, with hundreds of people struck by a vehicle every year. While some of these accidents are impossible to avoid, others should have never occurred in the first place. Last year, a San Francisco woman was hit by a vehicle while walking to her job. She said, “When the walk sign changed, I went into the crosswalk and the next thing I knew I’d been hit.”
Unfortunately, this woman was not the only one who has been involved in a pedestrian accident in this California city. Even though the city touts itself as being friendly to pedestrians, this is not the way things worked out last year, with approximately 800 people being hit, 21 of whom died as a result. A group known as Walk San Francisco recently gave the city a D+ in terms of pedestrian safety. In an attempt to make the local roadways safer for pedestrians, multiple agencies over the past 12 months have shown their support for Vision Zero, an initiative that hopes to put an end to pedestrian fatalities within the next decade. This initiative assumes that all crashes are related to human error, which means lessening or eliminating these should be possible through better education, traffic law enforcement and engineering. Nobody takes to the street hoping they are going to be part of a pedestrian accident. However, this is common throughout the state of California, especially in San Francisco. When a person is injured in this type of accident, they may decide to file a lawsuit against the driver of the vehicle as well as other parties who may have played a role.
Source: The Sacramento Bee, “San Francisco works to improve pedestrian safety,” Katherine Seligman, July 6, 2014
