The traffic manager says the killing of a pedestrian by a truck was probably unavoidable

Locals protested and demanded action from the city after a 70-year-old man was killed by a truck while using the crosswalk at Parnassus Avenue and Stanyan Street on Tuesday.

But transit chief Jeffrey Tumlin says there are unlikely to be any safety improvements near that stretch of Mount Parnassus and that the man's death is virtually unavoidable given the situation.

The area where the man, identified as Jose Chow, was killed is a key access point to UCSF's emergency room and Spinal Trauma Center, said Tumlin, director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

“If it's a primary fire and rescue route, we can almost never use things like speed bumps,” Tumlin said in an interview with The Standard, explaining that a spinal injury in a patient in an ambulance could be aggravated by speed bumps .