Locals have been staging protests and demanding city action after a 70-year-old man was killed by a truck while using the crosswalk at Parnassus Avenue and Stanyan Street Tuesday.
But transit chief Jeffrey Tumlin says safety improvements are unlikely to happen near that stretch of Parnassus and that the man’s death was practically unavoidable given the location.
The area where the man, identified as Jose Chow, was killed is an essential access point for UCSF’s emergency room and Spinal Trauma Center, said Tumlin, director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
“In a case where it’s a primary fire and ambulance route, we can almost never use things like speed humps,” Tumlin told The Standard in an interview, explaining that a spinal injury could be worsened by humps for a patient in an ambulance.
Fire trucks have to slow down to almost a complete stop to pass a speed hump, he said.
Preliminary police information does not suggest speeding was a factor in Chow’s death when he was hit by a dump truck turning right from Stanyan Street onto Parnassus, the transit director said.
The light was green, Tumlin said, citing initial police reports.
Even if speeding was a factor, the streets aren’t on the city’s High Injury Network list, meaning accidents rarely happen and installing speed cameras there isn’t allowed under state law, Tumlin said.
“So there’s basically no options because it’s an emergency room,” he said. “There’s no current options.”
Tumlin said he spoke with UCSF leadership on Thursday to see if they could explore other ways to make the area safer, but he cautioned that doing so would take time.
Reacting to Tumlin’s comments, Hope Giron agreed that speed humps were likely not the answer due to the hospital route.
Instead, the 23-year-old, who has lived in the area for a decade, thought the city should place flashing lights at the intersection like those seen near schools.
“If we had one of those here, that would be perfect,” she said. “People need to slow down, drivers need to pay attention, and pedestrians need to look up.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the intersection had a walk sign, according to SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin. The intersection does not have a walk sign.