Monday, Dec. 7: SF’s Bike Yield Law Before Supervisors

UPDATE: Bike Yield Law is expected to be discussed starting around 3:30 p.m. at City Hall’s Room 250 on Monday, Dec. 7, 2015.

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Monday, Dec. 7, 2015 at 1:30 PM will be streets safety advocates’ first and potentially only opportunity to advance SF’s Bike Yield Law at City Hall, but it’s going to take all of us uniting and speaking in one diverse and clear voice. Join the Bike Yield Law campaign for the latest news and updates on how you can help push this common-sense safety legislation across the finish line!

At the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting a week from today, Supervisors Malia Cohen, Jane Kim and Scott Wiener are scheduled to consider the merits of SF’s Bike Yield Law. The ordinance directs the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to treat safely and cautiously rolling through stop signs as the lowest traffic enforcement priority. The ordinance only applies to people biking through stop signs where others, including people walking, are not present at the intersection up their arrival.

The Bike Yield Law would be the first San Francisco law to codify that people walking always have the right of way and all others must yield. This is about keeping our streets safe and ensuring that SFPD officers are free to focus their attention on the traffic violations known to cause the majority of traffic deaths and severe injuries in our city.

Hundreds of you have written letters to your Supervisors, which has been crucial to maintaining and potentially expanding the Bike Yield Law’s support among elected officials. We’re so grateful for everyone who’s spoken up in support, including the Board of Supervisors-appointed members of the Bicycle Advisory Committee and the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee.

But with Mayor Ed Lee threatening to veto this safer streets legislation, the challenge now is to demonstrate public support for SF’s Bike Yield Law and educate lawmakers about the possibilities of reducing collisions and freeing up precious traffic enforcement resources to Focus on the Five — an SFPD promise to dedicate half of all traffic citations to the five violations that cause a majority of traffic deaths and severe injuries in San Francisco. We need eight Board of Supervisor votes to override the Mayor’s veto. We have six co-sponsors, so we need to help two other members of the Board of Supervisors understand that this rule is about creating clarity for the SFPD and allocating our enforcement resources to save lives.

Even after the events along the Wiggle this summer, SFPD leadership continues ordering officers to concentrate their time and effort away from high-injury corridors, and on people biking safely and cautiously. In the absence of clear vision by SFPD leadership, SF’s Bike Yield Law would free up officers to dedicate themselves more fully to the traffic violations that have and continue to result in traffic deaths and severe in injuries across our city.

Let’s make San Francisco a model for safer streets together. Now’s the time to make your voice heard. 

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