A doting grandfather was the second man to die at this dangerous Sacramento intersection

Muhammad Saddique, an affable retired utility executive who loved to walk his 6-year-old granddaughter home from school, was hit by a bus and killed Sept. 9 while headed to the gym in Natomas Park. He was 64.

The fatal crash occurred at Banfield and Club Center drives — the same intersection where Sau Voong, another man who was helping raise his grandchildren, was fatally struck on his morning bike ride June 11.

After the second death in September, the city re-striped the crosswalks.

“They should have acted when the first incident happened,” said Waqas Saddique, Muhammad’s oldest son. “I don’t know why the city didn’t act.”

A proposed state of emergency declaration over pedestrian and cyclist safety submitted in September called for a quick-build road safety program, which Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela has previously advocated for. However, the draft emergency declaration did not come with funding attached for a new program, and the city currently has no standard mechanism for rapidly changing infrastructure in response to fatal or severe crashes.

Research and other cities have shown that most traffic deaths are preventable. With that knowledge, Sacramento leaders made a “Vision Zero” promise in 2017 to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2027. Since that promise, UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System shows, more than 250 people have died on city streets.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg has called road safety a “top priority,” but the Department of Public Works has little funding to address safety issues and relies almost entirely on unpredictable grant awards. In June, the Sacramento City Council declined to earmark $1.5 million for a quick-build bike path program or $3 million to increase funding for projects that make “active transportation” — usually walking or biking — safer.

In addition to Muhammad Saddique and Voong, 29 people have died this year in vehicle collisions on city streets: Mattie Nicholson, 56; Kate Johnston, 55; Jeffrey Blain, 59; Aaron Ward, 40; Michael Kennedy, 40; Federico Zacarias Cambrano, 28; Marvin Moran, 22; Sam Dent, 41; Daniel Morris, 38; Terry Lane, 55; David Rink, 51; James Lind, 54; Tyler Vandehei, 32; Jose Valladolid Ramirez, 36; Larry Winters, 76; Johnnie A. Fite, 82; Robert Kohler Jr., 50; Edward Lopez, 61; David D. Taylor, 60; José Luis Silva, 55; Geohaira “Geo” Sosa, 32; Kaylee Xiong, 18; Azure Daniels, 48; Duane Ashby, 35; Martin Chavez, 41; Daniel Lee Jennings, 54; Jordan Nicolas Rodriguez, 38; Alfred Ramirez, 23; and a pedestrian whose name has not been released by the Coroner’s Office.

A majority were not in vehicles. Of the dead, 19 were cyclists or pedestrians, and two — Sosa and Xiong — were riding electric scooters.

The patterns of traffic fatalities

Traffic deaths often follow patterns, and in addition to the overlap between the North Natomas intersection deaths, other patterns were also evident in the first nine months of the year. Rink, Lind and Valladolid all died this year while walking or biking on Fruitridge Road between March and June. On one three-quarter-mile stretch of Arden Way this year, a crash in February and another in June killed Cambrano, a driver, and Winters, a pedestrian. In January, Dirk Couvson, then 20, had his leg amputated after a hit-and-run on the same part of Arden.

Sacramento won a $400,000 grant this year to begin planning safety changes on Arden. That project will take years to complete and would need another grant to fund construction.

In the meantime, the city has no established way to rapidly change infrastructure in response to crashes that cause severe injury or death; it has a $5 billion backlog of planned road projects.

Gabby Miller, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works, said staff were studying the area to see whether they could make other improvements. On Club Center, the speed limit is 35 mph, with speed bumps west of Banfield that slow drivers below that threshold. Although 35 mph is the legal limit, the city considers that speed lethal. Citing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Sacramento reports have acknowledged that when a vehicle traveling just 30 mph hits a pedestrian, the risk that the pedestrian will die is 40%.

Before making a decision, Department of Public Works staff need to consider designs, traffic volumes, weather — which can affect construction schedules — and cost.

Waqas Saddique spoke with a city engineer after the crash. He said he was told that re-striping the crosswalks to heighten pedestrian visibility — not force drivers to slow — was all Sacramento could do.

“I would hope for more so that nothing like this happens in the future,” Saddique said. “But I don’t know if they are going to do more.”

A family man and a social butterfly

Muhammad Saddique was born Oct. 14, 1959, to Abdul Majeed and Fatima. He grew up in a small village outside Bahawalpur in the province of Punjab in Pakistan, alongside three brothers and four sisters. As a boy, he excelled in school and was the first in his family to attend university.

Muhammad was ambitious with a talent for math, and he eventually pursued an electrical engineering degree from the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore. After graduating, he accepted a job at the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority, a nationally owned utility company. He married Talat Noeen in the mid-1980s.

Together, the couple raised three boys: Waqas, now 36; Wasif, 34; and Ammad, 32.

Waqas inherited his father’s penchant for math and is now an accountant at CalSTRS. Still, he struggled to name something that his father taught him because, he said, his father taught him “everything.”

“How to act,” Waqas said, after considering the question. “How to interact with people in professional life and in personal life.” Muhammad always encouraged his sons to be generous with people who didn’t share their good fortune.

“He would go above and beyond, helping people,” he said. “Financially, and if he had connections that could help them.”

After his death, when the family traveled back to Pakistan to settle some of Muhammad’s affairs, they found out about “so many people he had actually financially helped,” Waqas said. Muhammad had given interest-free loans to friends and acquaintances. He learned that his father had been making monthly donations to multiple mosques.

Waqas is still amazed at how his father created and maintained friendships.

“Sometimes you just talk to somebody, and then for months, you’re not having the communication,” Waqas said. “But he was very active. Morning to evening, he’s calling, messaging his friends, and then his neighbors. … He had this natural ability to connect, and to connect in a way that the connection stays there.”

In 2009, Waqas emigrated to Sacramento; the next year, his mother and Wasif joined him, and Ammad came in 2016 after graduating from medical school. Muhammad — still working for the utility company — wanted to finish his career in Pakistan, but traveled frequently to see his family in the California capital. In 2017, he was delighted to learn that Waqas and his wife, Fatima Ahmad, were expecting his first grandchild, Aaira. After raising three sons, he was thrilled to meet the baby girl. He flew to Sacramento and helped host an enormous party after her birth with 300 guests.

When he finally retired around 2019, he moved permanently to a house in North Natomas shared by his wife, as well as Waqas; Fatima; Wasif and his wife, Farwa Afzal; and, ultimately, two granddaughters — Wasif and Farwa welcomed Irha in 2022.

After a decade of traveling back and forth to Pakistan, he settled into being a full-time grandfather. He prepared food for the girls; he took Aaira to the park and walked her home from kindergarten and, this year, first grade. He loved to travel the neighborhood on foot, and Waqas said he checked the pedometer on his phone and saw his average was around 15,000 steps a day: over 6 miles.

Muhammad was outgoing and, Waqas said, “always smiling.” He came to know all their Natomas Park neighbors better than anyone else in the family, even though his wife and sons had a years-long head start living there. He’d walk right up to people, introduce himself and ask to exchange numbers. He didn’t just leave it at that — he’d take a real interest in their lives, Waqas said.

So when Muhammad died in a vehicle collision in their neighborhood, they joined his family in mourning.