This blog has reported frequently on pedestrian accidents in New York City and the efforts of Mayor de Blasio to combat the seeming epidemic of this type of accident. But what about Long Island? A report last year identified the roads in Suffolk and Nassau counties that are most dangerous and linked to a high rate of pedestrian deaths.
In fact, seven of the ten most dangerous roads in the metro New York area (including parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, and the Hudson River Valley counties) are on Long Island and are more dangerous than notorious New York City streets such as Broadway and Queens Boulevard. The most dangerous road in all of the New York metro is the Hempstead Turnpike, which runs from Queens Village to Montauk.
After Hempstead Turnpike, the most dangerous roadways on Long Island are the Sunrise Highway (Nassau County), Route 25/Jericho Turnpike and Route 110 (Suffolk County). The data is taken from 2009 through 2011 and reported by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The report analyzed pedestrian-vehicle accidents in the region. Hempstead Turnpike has been the most dangerous road in the region for five consecutive years.
The death toll on the Hempstead Turnpike is staggering. Between2009 and 2011 there were 14 deaths on the Turnpike, exceeding the number of pedestrian deaths that occurred on Manhattan’s Broadway – 12. In 2011 alone, eight pedestrians died on Jericho Turnpike, making it the highest number of fatalities on any road in the area for any year in the 2009-2011 time period. Jericho Turnpike was the deadliest road in Suffolk County and the third deadliest in the region during the period.
The report noted that these deadly roads are wide and busy; they were built to move traffic quickly through very populated areas. According to the associate director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, 60 percent of fatal pedestrian accidents occur on such roads, even though they are only 15 percent of the total number of roads.
Of the 1,242 pedestrian fatalities in the Tri-State area, around 200 of the deaths occurred on Long Island were killed between 2009 and 2011. Nassau County had 84 and Suffolk County had 110.