The woman killed on a scooter at Market and Powell last week now has a name — Yebin Kim, 32 — and her death has reopened a fight the city thought it settled in 2020: whether cars belong on Market Street at all.

Kim's death is the second crash this summer that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition ties to a wheel catching in a Muni rail groove, and advocates are using it to press three concrete demands — moving transit stops to center lanes, installing rubber strips that keep wheels out of the tracks, and restoring the full car-free corridor that Mayor Daniel Lurie partially rolled back last year. It turns the corridor's most iconic safety experiment back into an open political question.

Yebin Kim, a 32-year-old San Francisco resident, was riding a stand-up electric scooter near Market and Powell streets at 8:18 a.m. on Aug. 7 when a commercial truck hit her. Officers reached her with life-threatening injuries, and she died there despite medics' efforts, according to police. KQED reported (external source, opens in a new tab) that both the vehicle and driver have been located, but police declined further comment, citing an open investigation.

The San Francisco Medical Examiner identified Kim on Aug. 12, and SFist, citing the Chronicle (external source, opens in a new tab), reported the truck was branded with the ready-to-drink alcohol label Surfside, and that the driver has been cooperating with investigators. A witness told ABC7 that Kim's wheel may have caught in a streetcar track before she fell into the roadway — a chronic hazard on the corridor's flush rails, and one The Dissent flagged when it reported the crash on Aug. 8.

What's new is the politics. Claire Amable, who speaks for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, called Kim's death the second rail-groove crash on the corridor this summer, and the group is turning grief into a policy list. It wants transit stops shifted to center lanes so boarding riders mix less with bikes and scooters, rubber filler strips fitted along rail crossings so wheels can't drop in, and Market Street closed to cars entirely once more.

Riders, Amable told KQED, no longer feel "as safe" on the corridor as they used to.

That last demand is a direct shot at City Hall. Market Street was closed to private cars in 2020 under the "Better Market Street" plan, after years of Bicycle Coalition advocacy. Then last year Lurie reopened the corridor to a narrow set of vehicles — Waymo robotaxis plus Uber Black and Lyft Black — as part of his downtown-revitalization push. The change was announced in spring and took effect in late August 2025 (external source, opens in a new tab), with Waymo running most of the day and the black-car services limited to overnight hours.

Amable was careful to note ride-hail vehicles were not involved in Kim's crash. Her point, she told KQED, is about ambiguity: reopening the corridor to "luxury ride-hail" created "confusion" over who is actually allowed there, and she said that uncertainty is producing unsafe conditions on the street. It is not a hypothetical worry — the reopening was followed by a documented influx of illegal private drivers (external source, opens in a new tab) who read the loosened rules as an invitation.

Lurie, in a statement to KQED, called Kim's death "heartbreaking" and offered condolences to her family. He said the city would keep working to build safer streets "for all San Franciscans" as it investigates — language that stops well short of reconsidering the reopening he championed.

Market Street was closed to private cars in 2020 under the "Better Market Street" plan, after years of Bicycle Coalition advocacy.

The Bicycle Coalition planned a vigil for Kim at 4:30 p.m. Friday at the intersection where she died, and Amable invited anyone troubled by traffic deaths to gather there. Whether the city answers with rubber strips and center-lane platforms — or with a harder look at who it let back onto Market — is now the open question hanging over the corridor.