San Francisco officials to install GPS on city vehicles to prevent traffic fatalities

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco officials announced a plan called Vision Zero that will have GPS devices installed on most city vehicles to help eliminate traffic fatalities by the year 2024.

San Francisco supervisors unanimously passed the legislation that will require tracking devices in most of the city owned-fleet, which includes cars, buses and bulldozers.

They're hoping this will save tax payers money, identify fraud, and most importantly reduce collisions.

San Francisco supervisor Norman Yee still gets emotional when he thinks about the traffic accident a decade ago that almost took his life. He was hit by a car while crossing the street and was hospitalized for a month.

Now, he hopes to make the streets safer by requiring nearly 8,000 vehicles in the city-owned fleet be equipped with black boxes. "It will reach a consciences to these drivers to say, 'hey by the way, we will know what you're doing, we will know where you're going, we will know how fast you're going," Yee said.

The city spends nearly $77 million a year in settlements for traffic claims. Every year approximately 30 people die on the streets of San Francisco and another 200 are injured. "Crashes are not accidents, they are predictable and preventable and we know that we have tools in the tool box to prevent these crashes from happening in the first place," Walk SF spokesperson Nicole Ferrara said.

The black boxes are already in hundreds of city vehicles for example, helping to quickly track the fire department ambulance that was stolen and crashed on Treasure Island last week. San Francisco city administrator Naomi Kelly is in charge of the fleet. "The data will also help us in like how do we need to improve training? What neighborhoods do we see more accidents happening? Is there something with the design of the streets? Is it something with the design of the car?" she asked.

Officials said law enforcement vehicles are exempt.