20th Sacramento car crash death in 5 months sparks protest over road funding
At least 20 people have died in Sacramento vehicle crashes this year, sparking renewed criticism of the Sacramento City Council’s reluctance to fund road safety projects over the last nine years.
Last week, The Sacramento Bee reported that Trevon Hayes, 31, appeared to be the 20th person to die in a collision on city streets in 2026. Earlier in May, the city had released its preliminary budget — opting not to fund the Active Transportation Commission’s recommendations for enhanced street safety amid a budget crisis.
After The Bee’s report, Slow Down Sacramento founder Isaac Gonzalez sent a letter of protest to each member of the City Council Friday.
“On behalf of the Slow Down Sacramento Board of Directors, I am writing to express our deep disappointment that the City’s proposed budget does not meaningfully fund the recommendations advanced by the Sacramento Active Transportation Commission,” Gonzalez wrote. “We understand that this is a difficult budget year. … But we cannot allow roadway safety to continue being treated as optional. Road safety is public safety.”
Gonzalez and the board included a list of demands. They urged each member of the council to publicly commit to funding the recommendations in the next budget cycle — in their most recent report, they suggested a total of $8.2 million in road safety spending for the first year, and about $7.7 million in subsequent years. The letter demanded that council members identify any interim funding that could alleviate the crisis before the 2027-2028 fiscal year; explain in a public forum that includes grieving families what the exact budget constraints are; and work with the city staff to more quickly implement lower-cost safety improvements.
“The big picture is, they’re right. Slow Down Sacramento is right,” Mayor Kevin McCarty told The Bee Tuesday. “It needs to be more of a priority.”
In 2017, the City Council made a “Vision Zero” commitment to end traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2027. But previous reporting has shown that council members subsequently did little to change the funding streams to the Department of Public Works, whose officials are tasked with carrying out this ambitious goal.
This week, McCarty declined to make a firm commitment to finding more money to stop traffic deaths in the city’s budget next year. But two of his colleagues on the council, council members Rick Jennings and Roger Dickinson, have so far said they would work to fund at least some of the Active Transportation Commission’s recommendations in the next budget cycle.
What did officials say about road safety?
Dennis Rogers, Jennings’ chief of staff, said Tuesday that Jennings “views public safety as including not only police and fire but also pedestrian and bike safety.” He said the council member was particularly focused on ensuring the Department of Public Works’ quick-build program remained fully funded and on increasing the money that goes to the department’s speed lump program, as well as adding to the city’s grant matching funds. Some level of local contribution is required for many competitive grants.
Rogers, Dickinson and McCarty all said that they had high hopes for a citizen-led ballot measure that may end up on the November ballot. If approved by a simple majority of voters, the new local sales tax could direct more than $30 million a year exclusively toward road safety projects in the city. With that new funding stream, the City Council would face less pressure to find money in other parts of the budget.
But even if the ballot measure fails and the council doesn’t find any additional money to carry out its Vision Zero goal, Dickinson said that at minimum, the elected officials should give the Active Transportation Commission’s recommendations a hearing and face questions from the public about why — or why not — they’ll prioritize road safety.
Currently, public hearings do not generally occur. Councilmember Caity Maple ensured that the report was discussed at the City Council meeting in April, but that discussion was not automatic. From the dais, Maple said she wanted to discuss how to fund the “actionable” recommendations at a future meeting.
“We don’t, as a council, seem to have a practice of doing more than accepting the annual reports from the commissions and essentially filing them,” Dickinson said. He pointed out that the commissions are made up of residents who volunteer significant amounts of their time to evaluate the city’s choices.
“They have a right to expect that we will consider the recommendations that they make,” Dickinson said. He said he would work with the city manager to get commission reports off the consent calendar and have them on the agenda as a matter for discussion at City Council meetings next year, including the Active Transportation Commission’s report.
“We want it to be a specific consideration next year,” he said. “Not just, in a sense, get ignored by not being recognized or talked about publicly. I think that’s a reasonable request.”
He also said he would work to fund some of the Active Transportation Commission’s requests in the next budget cycle.
“Yes,” he said. “I think that this is an important, if not transcendent goal for us to reach: Vision Zero. We want to do as much as we can to reduce injuries and fatalities.”
Mayor’s familiarity with traffic-safety issue
McCarty said that he’s responded directly to road deaths twice in his political career. As a member of the California Assembly, he helped secure state funding for improvements on Folsom Boulevard after a driver struck and killed Lupe Jimenez Brown outside Phoebe Hearst Elementary School, where Brown, 45, was picking up her daughter. More than a decade ago, as a member of Sacramento’s City Council, he helped secure funding for a pedestrian signal crossing near West Campus High School after a driver struck and killed Michelle Murigi, 16, while she crossed the street.
“I can visualize the families,” McCarty said. He could picture their grief. “It’s not lost on me.”
In Sacramento, the number of grieving families keeps mounting.
Since January 2024, vehicle collisions on Sacramento city street have killed Mattie Olivia Nicholson, 56; Johanna Kate Johnston, 55; Jeffrey Allen Blain, 59; Aaron Matthew Ward, 40; Michael Joseph Kennedy, 40; Federico Zacarias Cambrano, 28; Marvin Alcides Moran, 22; Sam Allan Dent, 41; Daniel Lee Morris, 38; Terry James Lane, 55; David Allan Rink, 51; James C. Lind, 54; Tyler West Vandehei, 32; Jose Valladolid Ramirez, 36; Larry Dean Winters, 76; Sau Voong, 84; Johnnie A. Fite, 82; Robert Edward Kohler Jr., 50; Edward J. Lopez, 61; David D. Taylor, 60; José Luis Silva, 55; Geohaira Sosa, 32; Kaylee Xiong, 18; Muhammad Saddique, 64; Azure Amonti Daniels, 48; Duane Michael Ashby, 35; Martin Vincent Chavez, 41; Daniel Lee Jennings Jr., 54; Jordan Nicolas Rodriguez, 38; Alfred Ramirez, 23; Nelson Lee, 64; Lindie Jane Kraushar, 53; Victor L. Mencarini, 72; Najah Aaqilah Saleemah Islam, 30; Jonathon T. Slaugh, 62; Adrienne Keyana Johnson, 33; Cornelius Jesse, 59; Vuong Van Nguyen, 47; Zachery Ryan Taylor, 20; Natalia Regina Sanchez, 50; William Andrew Akens, 26; Ernesto Torres, 58; Zhen Cheng Kuang, 76; Thongthai Xanaxay, 55; Kaleb Josiah Green, 22; Huynh Huu Duc Nguyen, 30; Robert Michael Pineschi Jr., 36; Kimberly Lynn Pickett, 60; Parris Shauntel Windham, 41; Michael Driskell, 78; three young men from the same family, Omar, 25, Hashmatullah, 24, and Mohammad Shaoib Durrani, 22; Ricky Ray Reyes, 19; Nathan Christopher Scott Thomas, 50; Jeremy M. Robinson, 46; James Lee Little, 64; Alicia Andrea Barnes, 65; Nedra Lee Franklin, 67; Gerald L. Hall, 60; Bee Lao, 46; Kyle Scott Silvers, 33; Randy Allen Perez, 41; David Zoellner, 61; Jaheem Seay, 23; Reema Ram, 37; Christian David Garcia Flores, 31; Maria Aurora Victoria Titman, 29; Eunice La Vonne Queener, 67; Paris Lamar Johnson, 34; Ronald Howard, 68; Kalia Giselle Cabello Fernandez, 22; Josefina D. Guzman, 45; Dwayne Andrew Henderson, 44; Domonik Frederick Gross, 33; Habiba Safi, 33; Miguel Ramirez Padilla, 23; William Douglas Wradge, 27; Rule Allah Yahya Smith, 32; David Mordecai Meyer, 38; Forrest Murray Coss, 70; Lue Lawrence Powell, 53; Ariana Yaretzi Ayala Munoz, 19; Hayes, 31; and one man whose name has not yet been released by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office.
