A 32-year-old South Korean woman who had moved to San Francisco 18 months ago to pursue her career was killed after her electric scooter's wheel became lodged in tram tracks on Market Street, causing her to fall into the path of a delivery truck. Yebin Kim, who had worked her way up from a working-class family to a place at the prestigious Seoul National University before joining renewable energy firm QCells, died from a head injury despite wearing a helmet, prompting fresh calls from campaigners for safety improvements on the notoriously hazardous street.

Kim was struck on 7 August while travelling eastbound along the three-mile stretch of track that runs the length of Market Street; she was due to fly home to visit her family less than a month later. Her death was recorded as San Francisco's 17th traffic fatality of 2026 and the first involving a scooter rider, according to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which held a vigil demanding physical barriers to separate cyclists and scooter users from trucks and buses. Campaigners noted that banning private vehicles from Market Street in 2020 had cut injury collisions by 40%, but that Mayor Daniel Lurie's decision last August to readmit Uber, Lyft and Waymo vehicles had reversed some of that progress.