SAFE celebrated the end of May with a trio of legislative successes. Three SAFE-supported bills related to speeding passed the full California Senate — Senate Bills 1297, 961, and 1509 — on May 20,21, and 22, respectively.

Here’s a quick rundown of what these bills aim to accomplish and why we at SAFE think they’re important steps in making our streets safer for everyone.

After years of advocating for speed cameras as a non-police method of enforcing speed laws, Streets Are For Everyone was thrilled this past October when Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 645, allowing Los Angeles, Glendale, Long Beach, San Francisco, and Oakland to pilot a speed camera safety pilot…

Why Los Angeles Gets an “F” Grade for 2023

I am starting this report with a question that anyone reading this must think about:

How many more Angelenos need to die before we, as a collective city, start treating traffic violence with the urgency it deserves?

Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 645, authored by Asm Laura Friedman and cosponsored by SAFE, Streets for All, and Walk San Francisco! This means changes coming to school zones and high-injury intersections starting in 2024…

Authored by Glendale Assemblymember Laura Friedman, this bill creates a new pilot program in Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Long Beach, Oakland, and Glendale. It allows those cities to install speed camera systems in school zones, high-injury streets, and areas with a history of street racing.

The residents surrounding Marion Park have been terrorized by street racing for more than 20 years, a fire stoked by the release of the first Fast and Furious film. On May 19th, Fast and Furious X was released, and Marion Park was ready ….

In addition to other challenges, our schools are facing a public health crisis because of speeding, and it is only getting worse. Children and teens are dying, and they will keep dying unless change happens. While writing this report, yet another tragedy occurred near our SAFE office. On April 25th, 2023, 33-year-old Ghadah Abduljabbar, and her 6-year-old daughter were struck by a speeding vehicle in Hancock Park, a community of Los Angeles, CA. The mother was pronounced dead at the scene, and the daughter, a six-year-old, was severely injured but survived. The pair were hit while walking across a crosswalk near Hancock Park Elementary School, where the child attends the first grade. We cannot ignore speeding. Measures must be taken to mitigate speeding and keep our children safe.

On Saturday, January 21, 2023, hundreds of community members – kids, parents, cyclists, pedestrians, elected officials, and dogs (don’t forget the dogs) – came together at LA City Hall for a massive die-in protest for safer streets in Los Angeles. 312 lives were lost in 2022 due to traffic violence, and thousands more were seriously injured – the highest on record in over 20 years.

For the last several years, the holidays in Los Angeles have served as a grim reminder that the streets of this otherwise world-class city are fast and deadly. As Streets Are For Everyone (known as SAFE) rang in the new year, we learned that 2022 was no exception.