San Francisco got safer for cyclists. But not everywhere

And earlier this year, there was another high-profile fatality. In May, longtime cyclist Steven Bassett died after colliding with the driver-side mirror of a San Francisco Public Utilities Commision F350 pickup truck, according to the agency’s collision report on the incident. (The SFMTA report on the incident said that the cyclist struck the open car door.)

Bassett’s death happened at a complex moment in San Francisco’s yearslong push to make cycling in the city safer. On one hand, the city has made a dramatic investment in bike infrastructure in recent years. Between 2020 and 2024, the city nearly doubled its miles of protected bikeways, recently reaching 52 miles.

Likely as a result, street conditions are getting safer. San Francisco’s traffic crash data shows that the number of doorings has dropped dramatically in recent years. From 2014 to 2019, San Francisco officials logged an average of 55 dooring injuries each year. From 2020 to 2023, that number was down by more than half, to 22.

The reduction in doorings coincided with an overall improvement in cyclist safety citywide; the annual average number of bicyclist-motor-vehicle traffic crashes decreased by 31% between the years leading up to 2020 and the years since.

But while many San Franciscans have begun to glimpse the bikers’ paradise advocates have dreamed of for years, others remain in neighborhoods that have not yet seen the bike lane renaissance. That leaves cyclists hugging the side of the road, which allows them to avoid traffic but puts them in striking range of car doors.

That’s the case in much of the Bayview, where the Bassett crash happened. 

Bassett was riding north from his Bayview home at Quesada Avenue and Third Street to the downtown law firm where he worked on the morning he collided with the city truck, according to a friend of the cyclist.