A car flipped and destroyed a concrete barrier on the Bay Bridge's westbound Fremont/Folsom Street offramp this week, marking what witnesses say is the fourth major crash at the exact same spot in the past couple of years. At some point, we have to stop calling these freak accidents and start calling them a design problem.

The vehicle reportedly hit the median divider at high speed, obliterating the concrete jersey barrier and flipping sideways. Miraculously, both occupants — two younger people — walked away from the wreck. One was placed in a neck brace and taken by ambulance, but both were conscious and mobile. That's about the best outcome you can hope for when your car has, as witnesses described, "a massive hole in the bottom."

Here's what makes this story interesting on two fronts.

First, the good news: Everyday San Franciscans showed up. Multiple drivers pulled over immediately, cordoned off the ramp, and checked on the occupants before first responders arrived. One local who witnessed the crash noted that the initial emergency response was slow — an ambulance reportedly drove by and left — but civilians stepped in without hesitation. That's the San Francisco we like to see.

Second, the less good news: one witness at the scene claims the driver tried to recruit them as a getaway driver because the vehicle was allegedly stolen. If true, that's a whole separate layer of dysfunction — one that San Franciscans are unfortunately all too familiar with.

But stolen vehicle or not, four major wipeouts at the same median in roughly two years is a pattern, not a coincidence. Caltrans has added lights to the area, which is a start, but clearly not enough. As one local put it, "How fast do you have to be going to manage that?" Good question — but the better question is why this stretch keeps catching drivers off guard in the first place.

The barrier did its job this time: it absorbed the impact and kept the car largely intact. But barriers are a last resort, not a traffic safety plan. If the geometry of this offramp is funneling vehicles into concrete at destructive speeds, the fix isn't more lights — it's better engineering. Rumble strips, improved signage, lane reconfiguration — the toolkit exists.

Four crashes. Same spot. Same barrier. How many more before Caltrans treats this as the recurring infrastructure failure it clearly is?