Vision Zero has failed – traffic deaths are rising, and enforcement is missing

A new report from San Francisco’s Civil Grand Jury confirms what many San Franciscans already know: Vision Zero—the city’s decade-old plan to eliminate traffic deaths—has failed. In 2024, traffic fatalities hit their highest level in nearly two decades, and the San Francisco Police Department has effectively stopped enforcing traffic laws.

The Facts

San Francisco saw nearly 50% more traffic deaths in 2024 (a total of 42 deaths) than the Vision Zero decade average (~30 deaths annually), making it the deadliest year since 2007.

SFPD traffic enforcement has collapsed, with citations down 95% between 2014 and 2022, and still down 87% in 2024. In 2014, traffic enforcement officers averaged 500 tickets each per year. Last year, enforcement officers issued just 160 tickets each, across the whole year.

SFMTA's street safety improvements—like protected bike lanes and leading pedestrian intervals—have reduced collisions, but coverage is limited and slow to scale.

The Context

The Grand Jury describes SFPD’s complete lack of traffic enforcement as a “deeper cultural issue within SFPD: traffic enforcement is not prioritized or expected by leadership, and officers face no accountability for neglecting it.”

The Grand Jury notes that cumbersome technology is behind many of the enforcement issues. “Because the e-cite system often can't print citations, many officers avoid it altogether, instead issuing handwritten tickets. These tickets must then be hand logged into SFPD reports--and eventually transcribed by the courts back into a database years later. The mobile interface for the reporting required by RIPA is also unwieldy and slow, further discouraging enforcement activities.” We're not sure what this exactly means, and we hope to see a more in-depth explanation of the technology challenges the SFPD traffic enforcement team is facing.

The GrowSF take

SFPD stopped enforcing traffic laws and should be held accountable for not doing their job.

SFMTA needs to proactively intervene based on traffic data. We cannot keep following a whack-a-mole approach to street safety. Interventions should not follow deaths, they should prevent them. Promising tools like speed cameras, pedestrian islands, turn calming, and daylighting are underused.

We all deserve to walk, bike, and drive on safe streets—and that means leadership must stop making excuses and start making traffic safety a top priority. San Francisco’s failure is fixable. We must enforce traffic laws. We must make our streets safer.