Blog: The Burlingame frame job - Part II

… or how many times can one Vision Zero city fail five children?

Let’s state the obvious first: there is public outcry in Burlingame, but no Becker, no Mueller, no Berman this time.

Also, no Papan, no Mullin, no Canepa, no Speier. No “the buck stops here” from Mayor Stevenson. No words from Council woman Donna Colson and her policy of “incremental progress” aka “slow rolling”.

Politicians, Police and Media are framing the victims. What else is new?

This is part two of the story about the attempted frame job to blame two children riding an e-bike slowly and in full legal control of the roadway.

A 19-year-old driver from San Mateo leaves a downtown parking lot in Burlingame and ends up in a restaurant just seconds later. In the process, she manages to hit four children, one of whom has more severe injuries, and a 4-year-old is killed. Vision Zero City, Burlingame, wants this to be an “accident” as in “Act of God” and needs a distraction; local media wants clickbait. Combined, they used victim-blaming as their tool of choice.

Cities like Burlingame use this, unfortunately, very common practice to shed their responsibility and avoid lawsuits. And let’s make no mistake, Burlingame is absolutely guilty and liable in this matter. The law says so.

The laws of transportation are unsurprisingly similar around the world. When examining Maritime Laws or Admiralty, you can also refer to the International Ski Federation (FIS) rules or Ski Code, as well as California’s Vehicle Code and various DMV driving handbooks. All will – in spirit of the law – tell you that the faster/stronger mode of transportation (skier, motor boat, motor vehicle) needs to look out for the slower/weaker one (skateboarder, kayak, bicycle). In return, governmental agencies promise safety and protection and fulfill their part. If anything goes wrong, legal responsibilities should be fairly clear.

Know your Laws

On June 17, 2017, near Japan, the USS Fitzgerald collided with the container ship MV ACX Crystal. On Aug. 21, 2017, near Singapore, the USS John McCain collided with the tanker Alnic MC. Just a handful of facts were shared with everyone who knows and understands Maritime Law, revealing which ships were at fault and which ships were victims. The more maneuverable US ships neglected their duty of care in all kinds of ways. Navy heads in command started to roll even before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) finished its report.

On Aug. 8, 2025, in Burlingame, a driver plows into a restaurant, hitting four children in the process. Anyone with just a little bit of knowledge of the law understands that this wasn’t an “Act of God”, but an act of reckless driving. No tester at the DMV would hand out a participation medal for these kinds of driving skills.

If this were an AV?

If this were an autonomous vehicle, all blame would immediately go to the driver – as in Tesla or Waymo. They are expected to deliver 100% safety, or they can expect a lawsuit costing them millions. But this was a human driver, and humans are known to be fallible. Vision Zero, in this context, means that the City of Burlingame acknowledges human fallibility, anticipates it, prepares for it, and takes responsible action. Apparently, “human error” is responsible for over 90% of collisions – and frankly, that number sounds like lowballing.

When crashes like this happen, the city and police often do not want to blame the driver. However, the blame must automatically fall to the city leadership team itself. Someone violated their Duty of Care – it’s either the driver or the city.

Vision Zero, therefore, becomes also an admission of guilt. At the very moment a crash like this happens, the city automatically fails at providing that safety.

Vision Zero City of Burlingame

Burlingame’s PR team claims being a Vision Zero city now. Vision Zero is the safety methodology that acknowledges that humans make errors (a lot) and that they need help from the city to become better people via a Vision Zero Action Plan. Within that plan, the city will then utilize various Transportation Tools to help reduce fatalities and severe injuries, aiming to achieve a goal of zero. Neither San Mateo nor Burlingame is close to that number – in fact, their trend seems to be pointing the other direction.

And the reason they are trending in the wrong direction is that they are not only using the wrong tools, but they are also using them incorrectly, and then blaming the children.

The law and the city’s marketing (vision zero) tell us that whenever crashes like this happen, the Burlingame City Council and the staff are automatically at fault as well.

The Six “E”-Tools of the Trade

City transportation departments are supposed to be using 6 different Transportation tools all starting with “E”:

Engineering – “Separation of Speed and Power” as in safer sidewalks, safer bike lanes, safer intersections.
Evaluation – checking on a regular basis and possibly improving the previous solution.
Enforcement – Without visible police presence helps with evaluation and with compliance.
Education – Best practices would focus on walking/biking training in Elementary School and Driver’s Education in High Schools.
Encouragement – Strong Safe Routes To School programs support healthy, sustainable, safe Active Transportation.
Engagement, Equality, Empathy, Equity – this one changes a little depending on the audience.

And just for the record “Shaming or Blaming Victims” is not part of any of those toolsets. Never was, never will be. So Burlingame certainly got that one wrong.

So what else did the City of Burlingame do wrong?

The City of Burlingame still refuses to use the tools of “Engineering” and “Evaluation”.

If they did use those tools, a narrow, busy, downtown street like this with plenty of off-street parking would look different:

There would be no on-street parking blocking sightlines.
There would be bike lanes to make sure drivers aren’t flustered or panicked when they see bicycles.
This could be a one-way street to simplify navigation.
There could be raised crosswalks.
There could be a lower speed limit.

The City of Burlingame does not use the tools of “Encouragement” or “Engagement”:

The City has no Safe-Routes-To-School program to speak of.
Burlingame school district only provides the legally required school transportation – SamTrans is of little help.
The San Mateo Grand Jury suggests that each city have at least one dedicated person on staff working solely on pedestrian and bicycle projects.
It does not appear that Burlingame has a fully dedicated person on staff.
The San Mateo Grand Jury suggests that each city have a Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC).
It appears that Burlingame politicians shut down their BPAC a while ago.

Instead, Burlingame is mostly claiming to get away with the tools of “Education” and “Enforcement”:

If everyone behaved, everything would be fine.
We don’t need engineering; we have the police.

Is the city using “Education” and “Enforcement” correctly?

If they did, there would be a 20 mph speed limit in this business district (AB43).
There would be law enforcement presence to reduce speeding and distracted driving.
While police budgets continue to increase, the police presence appears to be decreasing.
Burlingame school district does not have a Safe-Routes teaching program.
San Mateo County high schools no longer offer Driver’s Education – all the funding allocated to this program was redirected to athletic facilities and programs, and it has never been recovered.

Even the simple effort of writing a solid, truthful, and educational police report was completely bungled in Burlingame. And local media was of no help either.

An International Example on solid reporting

There was just recently a similar situation in Germany where a car ended up in the attic of a barn after hitting a child on a trampoline and devastating a family’s garden.

Germans are renowned for their passion for cars. German police, media and politicians might also be a little bit too biased towards cars. Not too surprising for a country that invented the car and which regards the automotive industry as a cornerstone of its industrial sector. However, Germans didn’t just invent cars; they also invented bicycles and bike lanes, and they still offer a solid public transit system. The Europeans are also a little more protective of people walking or biking, especially children. European police live by those rules just a little bit more. Victim blaming is often recognized and called out quickly by the media or the public, at least in more modern European cities.

Anyways, the article is in German, but basically what is different here is just the professional style of information given by police and the reporting by media:

In Germany, privacy is usually afforded to both parties. No names are given.
The police took away and kept the driver’s license. If a driver ends up in the attic of a barn, people want to see reassurance that this driver isn’t getting behind a wheel anytime soon.
The devastation was described, which suggests distracted driving at high speeds.
The police mentioned no apparent signs of alcohol, but were waiting for a blood test to come back.
There is a blood test even in situations like this, even though no one died and liability is fairly obvious. No such thing in US cases.
No one was eager to blame anyone but the driver.
Absolutely no one blamed the child for the driver’s failure.

The driver was the one piloting a device that is killing millions worldwide, including some 40,000 Americans. That makes any driver always the first suspect. German police seem aware of this, US police are usually not.

In the US, the name of the victim is often published almost immediately, whereas the name of the perpetrator is frequently kept under wraps. Police often take impairment as a cause off the table too quickly. There are too many drugs and pills with side effects that can impair a driver. Police officers can’t possibly know all of this. There should always be a mention of something like ‘waiting for a blood test’ when a police officer issues assumptions about impairment. In fact, in the case of vehicular manslaughter, which every fatal crash could be, there should be a mandatory, multiday examination in a hospital required for the driver. And a full background check.
Going against all laws, vehicle codes, and common sense, police and media tried to pin this on two children on e-bikes and seem to excuse the reckless driver immediately.

Because blaming children on an “e-bike” in a headline is almost as great as blaming “Tesla” or “Waymo”.

It’s also a cheap distraction to avoid talking about all the mistakes the City of Burlingame and its council members have made over the years.

Conclusion

The reason US police are not as forthcoming in their reports is that cities like Burlingame want to shed their legal responsibility towards victims. The law requires all jurisdictions to provide safe streets for everyone. But Burlingame has a long history of neglecting that responsibility. Like how on earth is Bellevue/Primrose not a modern roundabout? How is the most residential version of the King’s Highway in Burlingame not getting bike lanes?

All this negligence puts Burlingame at risk of lawsuits by families and their injury lawyers; Burlingame could be facing millions of dollars in payouts. And that could be just one of the possible reasons why the police report was grasping at straws to blame the victims. Victims who feel that they are at fault are less likely to sue the city in a civil lawsuit.

But blaming the victims and letting the perpetrators get of easy is a bigger trend in California as Calmatters has laid out in their reporting serious License To Kill. And this trends often starts with local police and media reports publishing falsehoods.

More Information

CalMatters: License To Kill
Burlingame Police: Facebook Page
SF Chronicle: Driver strikes, kills boy, 4, and injures girl, 6, on Burlingame sidewalk
Mercury News: 4-year-old boy killed in Burlingame collision is identified
NBC: Community members mourn 4-year-old boy killed in Burlingame collision
SF Streetsblog: Driver Caused Burlingame Tragedy, Not an E-Bike Rider
Wikipedia: USS Fitzgerald collision
Wikipedia: USS John McCain collision
Germany: Car hits child on trampoline and flies into barn roof (in German)

Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.