San Francisco Safe or Unsafe for Pedestrians?

The “City of San Francisco 2009 Pedestrian Court Report” at

http://128.121.89.101/cms/rhomepd/documents/2009PedestrianCountReport4_16_10.pdf

..acknowledges the fact that “San Francisco is ranked by the state Office of Traffic Safety as the County having the highest total rates of fatalities and injuries to pedestrians by both vehicle miles and by population, especially for those over 65 years of age.  (See Appendix D and E).    In Appendix E, SFMTA | Municipal Transportation Agency quotes itself and states, “San Franciscans likely make more trips by walking than residents of other, less dense cities, which may account for the higher number of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in San Francisco County.”  Their point is not very comforting.  They say we walk more, so we have more exposure to being struck by cars and that explains why San Francisco has 107 pedestrian injury collisions per 100,000 people and the next closest large city in California, Los Angeles has 76 pedestrian injury collisions per 100,000 people.  The best way for our traffic engineers to determine how to make San Francisco safer is to instruct its police officers to investigate both injury and noninjury accidents.  That way the traffic engineers can figure out where the  dangerous parts of town are and come up with a meaningful plan to reduce the number of pedestrians killed each year.  In 2008 there were 13 pedestrian fatal collisions in San Francisco.