Hearing spotlights Vision Zero gaps as BLA estimates $2.5 billion economic cost of San Francisco crashes

The Land Use and Transportation Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on May 19 heard a multi-agency briefing on street safety, including a Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) estimate that traffic collisions cost the San Francisco economy about $2.5 billion over a five-year period.

Fred Brusso of the Budget and Legislative Analyst office summarized a national methodology from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the BLA applied to local crash reports and estimated 92,799 total crashes in San Francisco between 2018 and 2022 (about 18,560 per year) and 193 fatalities over that period. Adjusted for 2024 cost-of-living changes, the BLA’s total economic-cost estimate was roughly $2.5 billion for the five-year window. “We found that there were 92,799 total crashes between 2018 and 2022,” Brusso told the committee.

Public health and city agencies described the patterns and tools in use and limitations in measurement. Iris Hsu, lead epidemiologist for Vision Zero at the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH), said pedestrians remain the city’s most vulnerable travelers and that the city’s Vision Zero High Injury Network (HIN) — 12 percent of street mileage — contains more than two-thirds of the city’s severe and fatal traffic injuries. “Pedestrians remain the most…