SF’s Speed Cameras a Good First Step, but Bittersweet for Families of Speeding Victims

Every time Jenny Yu crosses the street with her mother, Judy, she can see how the collision still affects her, almost 15 years later.

“At any intersection, she grabs my hand really hard. When she sees cars, I can literally see her body tense up. And that’s because it triggers her,” Jenny Yu said.

When a speeding SUV making a left turn struck her then-nearly 60-year-old mother in 2011, it flung Judy across the intersection. She landed against a curb and suffered a traumatic brain injury. The collision occurred at the intersection of Anza Street and Park Presidio Boulevard, a six-lane road that doubles as State Highway 1, which cuts through the city with a 35 mph speed limit.

It’s a moment that changed both Jenny’s and Judy’s lives forever. Jenny is now a full-time caregiver for her mother, who also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from the crash and Alzheimer’s disease.

“ So she is physically here, but mentally she’s not anywhere near our mother,” Yu said, as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Yu and others, whose loved ones have been hit by speeding drivers, gathered Tuesday at another notoriously dangerous street to mark a moment they could only describe as “bittersweet”: San Francisco’s long-anticipated speed camera program began issuing tickets to drivers at 33 locations throughout the city.

Until March 2030, drivers traveling more than 11 mph or more over the speed limit at certain locations can expect to receive a ticket starting at $50.

The program comes as part of a 2023 bill that authorized six cities in the state, including San José and Oakland, to pilot automated speed enforcement cameras in a bid to make streets safer. Speeding is the number one cause of serious and fatal traffic collisions in the city, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

The first of the cameras was installed in March, and until now, it has only been sending out $0 warning citations to speeding drivers. Over 350,000 of those warnings have gone out since March, according to SFMTA, which said they have already been effective, citing a statistic that 70% of vehicles that were issued a warning citation did not get a second one.

“It is encouraging to see the program live up to its goal: educating drivers to shift to slower, safer speeds,” said Erica Kato, SFMTA’s chief spokesperson.

Tuesday’s gathering of family members of those killed or injured by speeding drivers occurred at the intersection of Franklin and Green streets, where one of the city’s speed cameras was installed. A block away, Richard Zieman’s son, Andrew, was struck and killed in 2021 in an accident related to speeding.

“ I’m not gonna pat them on the back. I’m glad it’s here, and I hope it helps,” Zieman said, “but they could have been doing this kind of stuff years ago because speeding down Franklin didn’t just start happening. That’s been a years-long problem.”

Franklin Street is a three-lane, one-way thoroughfare with a 25 mph speed limit. A section of the street between Broadway and Lombard, which has a steep downhill slope, saw 38 collisions between 2017 and 2021, including the one that killed Andrew.

“ The person that killed Andrew was doing almost 40 [miles per hour],” Zieman said. “Andrew wasn’t in the crosswalk, he wasn’t in one of the cars, he was crushed against a building just before 8 a.m. on a school day. Without speed, Andrew witnesses an accident and tells us about it. That’s the difference.”

Zieman said the city took action to discourage speeding in the area only after his son was killed, by doing things like installing curb bulbouts and adjusting stoplight timing.

“ But they had to wait for a level of carnage to do it,” Zieman said. “[The speed cameras are] a good move, but they’re way too late.”

Elias Batshon, the owner of Sherman Market, a corner store on Franklin and Union streets, said things have improved since the speed camera up the street was installed.

“ I’ve seen people slowing down,” said Batshon, who has owned the market for the last 35 years. “I mean, I’ve started to slow down.”

That’s welcome news to Batshon, who has seen his fair share of crashes in his decades in the store, including the one that killed Andrew Zieman.

Marta Lindsey, with the group Walk SF, wants to see the program expand both within San Francisco and to other cities.

“ The program’s success is quickly going to be speaking for itself,” Lindsey said. ”I think we will be quickly wanting to push for more legislation at the state level to allow an expansion.”

Walk SF is also supporting the Street Safety Act, a resolution introduced by Supervisor Myrna Melgar last week to improve traffic safety in the city, including expanding the use of speed cameras.

SFMTA is uploading speed camera citations data to an online portal. The most recent data is current through May and was last updated on June 30.

Kato told KQED in an email that the agency is not publishing citation data in real time and that the “next data batch upload will be closer to the end of August.”