Check the Vision Zero 10-Year Report and help us shape What’s Next for Vision Zero by sharing your feedback and priorities for making our streets safer through our online survey (until August 30, 2024) and our summer listening sessions and outreach events.

A System of Safety

Vision Zero SF recognizes that we are human, and humans make mistakes. The problem isn't only that there might be a crash but that human bodies have limited ability to tolerate crash impacts. Road systems must be designed to protect all users by anticipating human mistakes and designing and managing streets that physically encourage safer speeds and safer driving. Vision Zero SF's holistic Safe System Approach combines multiple layers of safety improvements that work together, centered on human life and coordinated across City departments: 

• Safe Streets

Speeding, inadequate visibility between travelers, and intersection conflicts all increase the likelihood of a crash that results in a severe or fatal injury. We are implementing design and data-driven engineering tools to improve safety: We’ve completed more than 13,000 traffic safety treatments on San Francisco streets since Vision Zero began in 2014—from signals (3,700) and signs (1,300) to traffic calming (1,100) and pedestrian improvements (6,000) and road diets and other major street redesigns (100), among others.

• Safe People 

Our most vulnerable road users are people outside vehicles—those walking, biking and rolling. Vision Zero SF is coordinating with other City agencies to create a culture that prioritizes traffic safety by raising awareness of the need for safer streets, reducing barriers to adopting safer driving behaviors, and creating traffic safety champions. Safe People actions address the human aspects of traffic safety: education campaigns, community grants, high visibility enforcement, policy decisions, etc.

• Safe Vehicles

San Francisco will remain actively engaged in research and discussion about policy and technological innovation at both the state and federal level. That’s how we and our dedicated community partners ensured the State of California passed needed speed, enforcement and road design reforms. As regulators discuss vehicle size, weight and speed limitations—and how to ensure the safety of driverless cars—the City will strongly encourage all measures that can save lives.

• Data Systems

San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to systematically link police crash data and hospital trauma center data, creating a national model for a High Injury Network (HIN) map: the 12% of streets where 68% of severe and fatal traffic crashes occur. The data is proving critical to understanding and acting on the inequities in traffic fatalities for older adults, non-English speaking populations, low-income or disabled individuals, minority populations and people experiencing homelessness. Safety improvements are now in place on 75 miles of the HIN.

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