If you drive, bike, or even walk in San Francisco, you've probably noticed something unsettling: the roads have gone feral.

We're not talking about the occasional California roll through a stop sign. We're talking about pedestrians playing real-life Frogger with Muni buses, drivers treating red lights like mood lighting, and cyclists blowing through intersections with the serene confidence of someone who has never heard of physics. The lawlessness isn't an edge case anymore — it's becoming the default setting.

As one SF resident put it after reviewing their own dashcam footage: "I see this insane shit more and more every day and it's honestly freaking me out. Why are traffic laws seemingly optional in SF?"

It's a fair question, and the answer is depressingly simple: because they basically are.

San Francisco has spent years deprioritizing traffic enforcement. SFPD staffing is down. The political appetite for pulling people over is essentially zero. The city has leaned hard into "Vision Zero" — the plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, a deadline that came and went with traffic fatalities still stubbornly high. Turns out, painting sharrows on the road and adding plastic bollards isn't a substitute for actually enforcing the law.

Look, nobody wants aggressive, revenue-driven policing. But there's a vast middle ground between a speed trap on every corner and the current state of affairs, where running a red light carries roughly the same consequences as jaywalking in 1987 — which is to say, none.

This isn't a partisan issue. It's a governance issue. When a city signals — through inaction, understaffing, and policy choices — that traffic laws won't be enforced, people adjust their behavior accordingly. Some get reckless. Others get scared. Everyone gets less safe.

The city spent $377 million on its transportation agency last year. San Franciscans deserve to know what, exactly, that money is buying — because right now, it doesn't seem to be buying order on the streets.

Enforcement isn't a dirty word. Accountability isn't cruelty. And pretending that infrastructure alone will fix human behavior is the kind of magical thinking that keeps getting people hurt.