Marina District mother demands street safety fixes after stroller crash

A left-turning pickup truck struck a 2-year-old boy in a stroller and his nanny in the crosswalk at Chestnut and Laguna streets, turning a routine walk near Moscone Park into the latest flashpoint over pedestrian safety in the Marina District. The crash, which happened April 16 around 1 p.m., has sharpened questions about whether one of the neighborhood’s most traveled corners was allowed to stay dangerous for too long.

The boy’s mother, Lindsey Kinder, said the nanny suffered facial wounds and that her son was turned upside down in the stroller. She said a line of children was also in the crosswalk at the time, a detail that underscored how much worse the collision could have been. Police said the driver failed to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, and the crash was captured on dashcam video.

The intersection sits on San Francisco’s High Injury Network, the city’s map of streets with the most severe and fatal traffic injuries. District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said there have been two serious accidents there since 2021. He also said traffic citations are down 90%, a drop he tied to drivers acting as if stop signs carry no real consequence. In response, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency says it plans to install playground-warning signs and daylighting at the corner in May.

Kinder and nearby preschool workers say that is not enough. The family is seeking a raised crosswalk and additional lights near Moscone Park, where caregivers and small children cross every day. A GoFundMe has been started to help the nanny with recovery costs, but the bigger demand is for street design that prevents the next crash instead of reacting after one.

The Marina incident landed as San Francisco keeps treating high-crash corridors as a central public safety issue. The updated 2024 High Injury Network identifies the streets where the most severe and fatal traffic injuries occur, and the Federal Highway Administration’s San Francisco Vision Zero profile says 13% of streets account for 75% of the city’s severe and fatal traffic crashes. The city has also expanded automated speed cameras, saying the program produced an 80% decline in speeding at the 33 locations where cameras are installed, with San Francisco becoming the first city in California to use the technology.

The pressure is even higher after another child was killed at a San Francisco crosswalk in February, when a 2-year-old girl died at 4th and Channel streets in Mission Bay after a driver struck her and an adult crossing the street. After that fatal crash, the city repainted crosswalks, retimed signals and began a rapid response review for more fixes. In the Marina, families are now asking why stronger protections were not already in place before a toddler in a stroller was hit at Chestnut and Laguna.