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A woman in her late 60s suffered life-threatening injuries Friday morning after a cyclist apparently blew a red light and slammed into her, according to San Francisco police.

The woman is still alive and is being treated at San Francisco General Hospital.

She was crossing the Embarcadero at Mission Street just before 8:30 a.m. when a young man riding a blue Bianchi road bike northbound on the Embarcadero crashed into her. The woman was knocked to the ground and suffered a life-threatening head injury, police spokesman Albie Esparza said.

“It appears that the bicyclist ran the red light,” he said.

Police have not released the name of the cyclist or the woman — and have yet to make a final determination of who was at fault. The cyclist stayed behind and cooperated with the police, who took his bike for investigation.

Zusha Elinson/The Bay Citizen

San Francisco Police officers talk with bicyclist who collided with a pedestrian near the intersection of Embarcadero and Mission Streets in San Francisco, CA on July 15, 2011.

If the woman dies, she would be the first pedestrian killed by a cyclist in five years in the Bay Area, according to the Bay Citizen’s Bike Accident Tracker, which charts all bike crashes reported by police between 2005 and 2010.

Accidents between pedestrians and bikes are not as frequent as you might think.

There were 168 accidents in San Francisco that involved a pedestrian and a cyclist between 2005 and 2010, according to the Tracker. That’s 7 percent of all bike-involved crashes during that time.

In three-quarters of those collisions, the cyclist was found to be at fault by police. Running red lights is one of the leading violations in bike-caused accidents in general.

Even with the Embarcadero’s plentiful cyclists and walkers, it is not normally a dangerous spot. Just three crashes involving bikes and pedestrians were reported on the Embarcadero between 2005 and 2010. In contrast, there were more than 35 bike/pedestrian crashes on Market Street over the same time period.

Sydney Lupkin contributed data reporting.