But we don’t have to tell you it’s dangerous to bike or walk around urban areas. To amble across the street while oncoming traffic roars toward you or to cycle hugging the side of the road while cars fly past your elbow is to know fear. And it’s not all in your head, either. In 2000, 33 pedestrians were killed and 972 injured in San Francisco1 – that’s over 25 times as many people who were murdered that same year, and four times as many that were raped.2 In Oakland that same year, where crosswalks are scarce and traffic is brutal, 8 pedestrians were killed in 2000 and 274 injured.3 And God help you if you’re strolling around San Jose, rated the sixth most dangerous California city for pedestrians,4 where 22 pedestrians were killed and 390 injured in 2000.5

“In San Jose, you’re seven times more likely to be seriously injured or killed by a car than by violent crime,” says Russ Westbrook, president of pro-ped organization Walk San Jose. “Five decades of neglect to pedestrian infrastructure, combined with a development pattern of auto-dependent sprawl that ignores the needs or safety of pedestrians makes San Jose a dangerous place to walk.”

And it gets worse.

“An auto culture has developed as a result of this shortsighted, cars-first urban planning, that assumes pedestrians have no place in the Silicon Valley streetscape,” Westbrook continues. “Speeding is rampant. Motorists loathe yielding right of way to pedestrians at crosswalks. Even reaching a transit station or bus stop is a test of courage.”

That pretty much sums up the situation in Oakland too, which was built to be a city for cars, with wide multilane thoroughfares, scarce crosswalks and many areas without sidewalks at all. Berkeley, Marin and residential South Bay areas like Los Gatos or Mountain View are more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly, but things aren’t much better in SF. Despite a wealth of wide, friendly sidewalks and a growing number of bike lanes, thanks to the hard work and tireless boosterism of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, SF is still a pretty dangerous place to transverse.

Ken Kelton of PedSafe says the same thing goes for pedestrians. He’s been raising public awareness of pedestrian fatalities in SF for three years by spray-painting the outline of a body in areas where pedestrians have been killed.

“Unlike more modern suburban cities like San Jose or LA, there’s still some pretext in SF that it’s accessible to pedestrians,” says Kelton. “In SF it seems so much safer with the narrower streets and slower traffic that people are lulled into thinking they can take chances. And that’s when they’re hit.”

It’s not that drivers don’t give a crap, or that they want to rearrange your nice, neat body parts into a Picasso painting. It’s just that there are so many more interesting things to do in the car than being hyper-alert for cyclists or pedestrians. There are fascinating cell phone conversations, radios to turn up and down, cigarettes to smoke, cheeseburgers to eat, weird stuff on the side of the road to look at. Take your eyes off the road to look at any of these things for even a fraction of a second and it’s all too easy to miss that pedestrian in the crosswalk, or to plow into that cyclist you didn’t notice.

So the ultimate responsibility for keeping all your organs tucked away where they belong is yours, Mr. or Ms. Pedestrian or Cyclist. Sure, it sucks. Traffic safety should be everyone’s first priority. But when an SUV driver knocks you over on your bike while trying to take a sip of their latte, you’re going to be too busy picking pieces of glass out of your face to listen to many apologies or explanations.

Want to avoid being turned into a pile of guts on the roadway? Learn from those who were lucky enough to walk away from their accidents.

I’ve Just Gotta Make This Turn
A driver intent on making a turn is usually paying far more attention to oncoming traffic than anything else that might be sharing the road, and the results can be disastrous. Statewide, 542 drivers, pedestrians and cyclists were killed by improper turns, and 29,134 were injured in 2000.6

Those same turns are dangerous to cyclists, who are likely to be riding on the right side of the road.

“It would be nice if we could have all drivers drive predictably, using signals and checking for bikes before they make a turn, but we can’t control that,” says Shahum. “Bicyclists have to bike predictably themselves, using signals when they’re going to turn and watching out for drivers who may turn suddenly or without signaling.”

And when they don’t – well, CJ (who’d rather her last name not be revealed) has a story about what happens. She was hit in 1995 while biking in Berkeley and going straight through the intersection at Fulton and Carlton. The car that hit her was turning left in front of her and neglected to signal.

“I hit the rear quarter panel of the car, went over it, and landed on my hands and my head. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I’d be dead,” says CJ. But she was lucky to be alive, right? Well…

“Afterwards, everything is foggy. I got up right away, and later that night I threw up. I went to the doctor the next day because I knew something was wrong. I had to fight with my HMO for 11 months to get an MRI and when they finally did it they said ‘Wow, you’ve been bleeding into your brain this whole time.’”

What CJ had was a traumatic brain injury, termed “mild” because she could still function, just at a markedly impaired level.

“It pretty much destroyed my life,” she says. “I felt miserable, muddle-headed, I couldn’t think. I had neuropsychological tests that confirmed I had a lot of difficulty with auditory attention and memory. I had always been a pretty high-level thinker, I used to tutor math and physics at MIT, and now I’d be trying to communicate with people and I’d have to ask them to repeat themselves over and over again.”

She’s a bit less foggy now, she says, but she’s not the person she was before.

“I lost friends, I lost my significant other, because I’m just not the same person. I’ve lost most of the more charming aspects of myself – I don’t have the quick wit I had before where I could light up a room, I’m more short-tempered” she says. “From a strictly selfish perspective, it would have been better for me to have just been killed in the accident. Instead, I have this knowledge of who I was before – I had a being, and that being ended and I didn’t. It’s a very surreal experience to have the you you were before end before you die. If I could have had a spinal cord injury instead, I’d take it in a heartbeat and I sh*t you not.”

Red Light? What Red Light?
Red light violations, where drivers fly through red or so-yellow-it’s-orange lights, are one of the greatest dangers on the road. Statewide, 193 drivers and pedestrians/cyclists were killed in 2000 by stop signal and sign violations7, while a whopping 30,3828 were injured — almost 5,000 more people than were killed or injured by drivers under the influence of booze or drugs.9

Cities like San Francisco, where red-light running is rampant (causing an average of 786 collisions and 1,324 injuries annually in SF, according to the CHP10), are trying to put a lid on the problem. Stop-light cameras that snap a picture of violators’ plates, and stepped-up law enforcement has eased the situation somewhat, but it only takes one speed-happy driver to blast through a red light and mess you up good.

Just ask Sylvia Allen, who was walking south along Castro Street on a rainy day in 1996 and was crossing 15th on a green light in the crosswalk.

“I was about two-thirds of the way across 15th when a truck came tearing down 15th from my right, then braked hard, rolling through the crosswalk and bumping me in the hip,” says Allen. “I fell to one knee but got right up again and ran to the sidewalk. The driver got out of the cab and started walking toward me with his fists balled, yelling, ‘What the f*ck do you think you’re doing, running in front of me like that?’ I just stared at him and backed away. He kept yelling stuff like that, alternating with yelling ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’ I kept backing away from him because he was way scary. I thought maybe he was crazy or drunk.”

Allen sued the plumbing company that owned the truck, and they paid her about $3,500, not much considering her hip and shoulder still ache at times.

Doored!
The word alone sends chills through Bay Area cyclists, who know firsthand the agony of vaulting over a car door opened too quickly.

“Based on our own informal surveys, being doored is the number one problem facing bicyclists,” says Shahum.

It certainly was a big problem for Dennis DeBois, who was doored in 1998 while starting into the Stockton Tunnel in Chinatown on a green light.

“Everyone was stopped at the red light and I was at the rear of this little Honda CRX,” says DeBois. “The light turned green, I started to go, and the Honda lurched up three feet and then stopped suddenly and the passenger door flew open. I knew enough to watch out for parked cars, but I never thought I’d be doored by a car in traffic.”

The woman emerging from the Honda knocked DeBois over with her door, but, unfazed, stepped over his body on the pavement and continued on her way. Meanwhile, DeBois began dragging himself painfully to a phone to call 911. The Honda’s driver had other ideas.

“He called over a couple of friends: ‘Hey, help me stop this guy, he’s going to call the police,’” says DeBois. They advanced on him menacingly, only retreating as they heard DeBois reaching 911 and repeating the Honda’s license plate number. “When the cops came they said it was really common for accident victims to get mugged while they’re on the ground after being hit,” says DeBois incredulously.

Though the accident may not have appeared that bad to bystanders, DeBois tore ligaments in his right foot, an injury that still cramps and aches when DeBois drives or walks.

Sorry, I didn’t see you
Many accidents are caused by drivers who just don’t notice a bike or pedestrian is sharing the roadway. East Bay-er Andrea Clark was hit in 1990 when a driver making a left turn just didn’t notice she was going straight on the same road.

“When I came to in the ambulance there was blood all over my face,” says Clark. “I was a week away from heading off to Yale for a PhD in psychology and I’m thinking ‘Oh my God, my brain, my brain.’ I was rubbed raw all over my back, and had such bruises from my knees up to my groin that were so deep they said it would never go away. But the worst part was when they were taking me into the hospital and one of the paramedics was saying ‘It’s such a shame, she had such a pretty face’ and I thought in horror ‘What HAPPENED to my face?’”

Andrea Clark was one of the lucky ones – she survived, and her relatively minor injuries faded away. But thousands and thousands of those hit aren’t so lucky. Take some advice from those who know to be safe out there.

“Ride predictably, obey traffic laws and assert yourself,” says Shahum. “Don’t ride all the way over to the side of the road or you might be doored. Ride at least three feet away from parked cars. In a narrow lane of traffic that means you’ll be in the middle of the lane, and that’s fine. If drivers get tired of waiting they can go around you.”

“Wear bright clothing or reflective material at night,” says Westbrook. “Obey traffic laws, and identify any hazards to the city, the police, or to us at mail@walksanjose.org. Get the attention of motorists before crossing the street. Never expect that they know, or even care that you have the right of way. Signal your intentions clearly by pointing, waving, or whatever it takes to get them to yield before stepping off the curb.”

And if you don’t – well, Ken Felton of PedSafe may be stenciling an outline of your body on some city street sometime soon. 3

Biking and walking safely should always be a priority — particularly if you’re at the following intersections in San Francisco and San Jose. Intersections appear in order from most to least dangerous.