Liz Colomello woke up to the disorienting glare of a ceiling light and medical staff hovering over her, scared and confused as to how she landed at San Francisco General Hospital’s trauma center.
The previous evening — Dec. 7 — Colomello, her husband and their three dogs were crossing the intersection on Monterey Boulevard and Ridgewood Avenue, less than a block from their home in San Francisco’s Sunnyside neighborhood. A speeding Toyota Corolla approached eastbound. The Corolla’s driver blew through a stop sign at the intersection and crashed into Colomello, throwing her more than 15 feet. The crash injured her head and neck and fractured her pelvis and four vertebrae, requiring spinal fusion surgery. A larger vehicle or higher speed probably would have meant her death.
“I was very lucky,” Colomello said.
Since 2011, S.F. General has treated 5,337 patients for severe traffic injuries such as Colomello’s, according to a new report by the city’s Department of Public Health examining traffic injury trends over the past decade.
The city’s latest report comes as San Francisco and other Bay Area cities struggle to meet their Vision Zero goals of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2024. Meanwhile, pressure mounts from residents and advocates for greater and faster street safety improvements. The contentious issue again captured the region’s attention last week after the death of Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan, who was struck by a motorist at a waterfront intersection in Alameda on Wednesday morning while walking her dog.
In San Francisco, overall severe traffic injuries have slightly declined since 2019, according to the report — from a peak of 592 in 2018 to 512 last year — while the most severe “critical injuries” have remained consistent before and during the pandemic.
The state defines a severe injury as an injury that includes broken or fractured bones, dislocated or distorted limbs, severe lacerations, severe burns, or a state of unconsciousness when a person is taken from a collision scene.
While some categories saw notable increases or declines during the pandemic, the report cautions that the trends from the 2020 pandemic year “may be a brief aberration,” from a period when fewer people drove during lockdowns.
Pedestrians account for the highest share of severe injuries reported to S.F. General. Though cases of severe injuries among pedestrians notably declined from 186 in 2019 to 137 in 2020 during shelter-in-place orders, it still tied motor vehicle injuries as the most common type of severe injuries during the pandemic.
Severe injuries for bicyclists declined to 76 in 2019 — a record low over the past decade — but rose to 115 last year. Two dozen of those severe injuries in 2020 were classified as critical, up from 16 in 2019.
The report also flagged electric scooters as an “emerging mode” that “may be particularly vulnerable to traffic injury.” Four of the five e-scooter injuries that required hospitalization last year were critical injuries, and the city logged its first two scooter-related fatalities last year.
In 2014, San Francisco made its Vision Zero pledge to eliminate traffic fatalities within a decade. Since then other Bay Area cities such as San Jose, Berkeley, Alameda and Fremont have set similar goals focused on ending deaths.
But fatalities alone don’t fully illustrate the scale of the city and region’s traffic safety crisis, advocates say, and severe injuries can drastically alter someone’s quality of life.
“Severe injuries don’t get the headline, but it should make a headline that we have hundreds of people being severely injured every year in traffic crashes,” said Marta Lindsey, spokesperson for Walk San Francisco.
Less than three years out from its self-imposed 2024 deadline, there are signs San Francisco plans to more aggressively pursue street safety improvements.
The Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors endorsed a strategic plan last week calling for fast-tracking 20 safety improvement projects each year and completing an “active transportation network” connecting Slow Streets, car-free street segments and protected bike lanes throughout the city.
The agency is also putting to use a new state law to reduce speed limits — one of the main predictors of surviving a crash — on seven busy streets in January.
“To be honest, I don’t know that we are going to be reaching zero traffic deaths by 2024,” said Tom Maguire, director of the SFMTA’s Streets Division. “But we have to stay at the leading edge of cities.”
Witnesses said they saw the Toyota Corolla strike Colomello at a speed that appeared to be greater than 40 mph on Monterey Boulevard — where the speed limit is 25 mph, the limit for most city street segments. A pedestrian has a 20% likelihood of surviving a vehicle crash at that speed, according to data cited by the agency.
Colomello’s recovery has been long and grueling. She wore a neck brace for six weeks and spent months on a walker trying to regain her strength. Her neck mobility is not entirely back, and doctors told her it probably won’t return to 100%, she said.
Still, she’s thankful she was able to take two months’ paid time off her job to try and recover, and that her husband, Steve, has been there to help take of her. They cherish their walks around the neighborhood with their two greyhounds, Bodhi and Franny, and their Chihuahua mix, Bruno.
Liz Colomello, who was hit by a speeding car last year, and her spouse, Steve Poleri, with their dogs in San Francisco.
Yalonda M. James/The ChronicleBased on city data, hundreds more severe traffic injuries have probably occurred in the year since Colomello’s crash, and the experience “just makes it even more heartbreaking every time I see it happen to someone else,” she said.
“This can change your life,” Colomello said. “Even if you come out of it physically OK, you can automatically lose your ability to take care of your family, your income. Every one of these accidents has a huge ripple effect for the people involved.”
Ricardo Cano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ricardo.cano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByRicardoCano
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