too bad they scrapped the original Better Market plans for protected bike lanes

I'll give you that buses tend to be more predictable - they run fixed routes, you can guess where the stops are - but my biggest problem is whether they can see me or not. They are large so if they don't see me and start moving while I'm trying to pass it could end badly. Usually I try to only pass if they just stopped and I clearly have plenty of room and time.

Cars tend to scare me more as there are way too many impatient drivers who are all to happy to speed around me without much clearance and then cut me off. And they could easily misinterpret me weaving a little to avoid a bump as me scooting over it pulling over for them or starting a turn. And don't get me started on how many cars have tried to right turn on red arrows across bike lanes which have a green signal.

Other bicyclists and pedestrians often suck too, but worst case if I run into them is pain, not death.

I biked 3x weekly to work for a decade from NoPa. Muni busses repeatedly “tried” to kill me - so much so that going up McAllister, I’d hug the double yellows to keep buses from precariously passing me and then cutting me off every other block. The ass end of accordions in particular would rest half way into the other lane, leaving absolutely no where for me to go, and no ability to start from a stop in the middle of the road going up hill in the wrong gear (with other cars and buses soon to be wizzing by). I’d classify the overall behavior as between casual indifference to my safety (let alone me as a person) and outright contempt for my existence.

Can you cite a source for that one? Of the 25 fatalities in sf in 2025 all but two were someone driving a car, truck, or van.

Of the two others, one was a scooter operator striking and elderly person, and then the other was an elderly person on a mobility device swerving out of the way of pedestrians crossing against the light. Zero bus accidents involving pedestrian fatalities.

I believe that their was one bus fatality this year, but of 12 total, I haven't looked up the causes of those accidents yet but I'd guess that the majority of them are going to be caused by drivers as well.

That makes sense, given that the median car mile probably isn’t in a dense urban core. The more accurate comparison would require us to know pedestrian fatalities per mile in urban areas.

What matters is not the number of miles.

What matters is the number of people killed.

A steady miles per fatality means more people die as more miles are driven.

And more miles driven is the trend.

How about by hour?

Cars are not causing a lot of pedestrian fatalities driving on the freeway between Nowhere and Flyover, but they rack up the miles there.

They also tend to be carrying 5-25x more people than cars, so there are far fewer of them. They also tend to be driving in the city on the busiest streets, whereas arbitrary cars are more often driving on vacant streets and highways.

so try the comparison using (miles x flow) instead of miles if you're measuring safety, and if you're measuring worthwhile risk, multiply that by passenger-miles. If you're talking about pedestrian safety, you'll probably have to square the (miles x flow) because pedestrians are also less safe the busier a street is.

Some muni busses definitely dngaf, I've gotten cut off by them, the bus driver just deciding it was going to switch lanes into me before making its stop. I had to slam the brakes and ended up pressing my hands behind the bus because I couldn't slow down in time.

I now record my rides.

Similarly, I’ve seen more than one accident caused by a pedestrian stepping into traffic without looking, taking out a cyclist in the process (from between vehicles, eyes on a phone). Nothing too serious, but only by luck. No one is overtly concerned by traffic laws in SF regardless of the mode of transit.

I agree overall. That said, there isn't really a difference between 14th Street and the other nearby numbered streets in Manhattan. Market Street connects 2 different grids and doesn't have a clean alternative.

Seattle and SF did the same. The streets are now horror shows.

NYC is just an exception, because it has so much pre-concentrated urbanistic misery that adding a bit more is not noticeable.

Noah Smith is like Gell-Mann amnesia personified. He's good at writing columns such that he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, until he opines on something you happen to be familiar with, and you realize he's completely full of shit and that his main talent is the ability to rapidly pump out a Wikipedia-skim-tier opinion on whatever happened to draw his attention that day. Would strongly recommend putting him on your mental ignore list.

If a car owner loses their license, they keep driving without a license. It's also much harder to lose their license.

CDLs are much easier to lose and your employer knows if you have one or not, so it's directly tied to your income.