Cable car, SUV collide, injuring two
By: John Upton and Katie Worth
San Francisco Examiner
December 18, 2008
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| At least two people were injured when a cable car and an SUV collided Wednesday afternoon in Russian Hill. (John Upton/The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Two people were hospitalized and blood was left pooled on Hyde Street following a peak-hour collision Wednesday evening between a moving cable car and a sport utility vehicle.
The 4:55 p.m. accident, near the intersection of Hyde and North Point streets in Russian Hill, closed a quiet block to traffic near The City’s Ghirardelli Square and Russian Hill Park, and disrupted service on the Powell-Hyde line for almost two hours.
A woman in her mid-30s, who had been riding in the green, three-door Honda SUV, was left hospitalized at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital with injuries not considered life threatening. The SUV sustained cracked front windows and substantial damage to its rear, according to police spokesman Sgt. Wilfred Williams.
An older man who had been aboard the crowded cable car at the time of the collision was sent to San Francisco General Hospital with leg injuries, according to Williams.
A vertical plank of wood that supported a handlebar on the festively decorated cable car was snapped during the collision, in which the cable car was believed to have been traveling southbound uphill at 9.5 mph, the standard speed, according to Muni spokesman Judson True.
Scraps of metal and plastic that were torn off the SUV were scattered in both directions along Hyde Street, and bloody socks and a pool of coagulating blood rested between the vehicle and the cable car.
The SUV burped heavy clouds of smoke and over-revved when officials drove it to a parking spot 10 yards away from the site of the accident, which occurred in front of the Blazing Saddles Bike Shop.
The cause of the accident was under investigation Wednesday, but witness accounts provided conflicting details of the cause. The SUV might have backed into the cable car, or the cable car might have collided with the SUV when it was double-parked, according to witnesses.
As is standard practice following any accident involving a cable car, the gripman and the conductor were immediately tested for drugs and alcohol and will be placed on nondriving assignments until the investigation is complete, True said.
The damaged cable car was towed away at 6:30 p.m. and normal service resumed at 6:45 p.m.
The accident occurred three months after a cable car on the same line struck and killed 80-year-old pedestrian Jin Xi Yu Lin on Mason Street near Broadway.
