Brooks: More cameras, cops possible on Southern State after fatal crash

Speed cameras and additional police may be needed to patrol the Southern State Parkway, a Long Island lawmaker said Wednesday, two days after a pair of motorists, driving erratically, caused a crash that killed a Holbrook father of three.

State Sen. John Brooks (D-Seaford), who has called for increased fines and more signage to combat traffic fatalities on the parkway, said he plans to meet with state troopers who patrol the roadway to discuss ways to combat reckless drivers.

"We have a lot of bad accidents on the roadway that are a direct result of people not obeying the law either in terms of how they drive, their rate of speed or alcohol," said Brooks, whose district includes a stretch of the Southern State. "The question is if it's worthwhile to increase surveillance on the Southern State Parkway or to put cameras there picking up people that are traveling at high rates of speed."

Brooks and Assemb. Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont) have proposed creating "highway safety corridors" on the parkway, where signs would indicate double fines. The corridors would be established, in part, based on an analysis of locations with a high incidence of fatal crashes due to driver behavior.

On Monday near Exit 38 in North Babylon, Richard Riggs, a 75-year-old auto parts salesperson, was driving his Mitsubishi Outlander east on the parkway. A stolen Range Rover, in tandem with a Jeep Cherokee, both "operating erratically," attempted to pass between Riggs and a sedan, State Police said.

Riggs lost control of his vehicle, which flipped and stopped on the right shoulder, authorities said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have continued searching for the drivers since the crash but so far, no one has been apprehended.

Newsday has previously reported that from 2014 to 2018, there were 43 fatal crashes on the Southern State. A 10-mile stretch of the parkway, from Exit 17 to Exit 30, and spanning part of Brooks' district, has earned the ominous nickname: "Blood Alley."

Data provided by the New York State police show that law enforcement have responded to an average of more than 3,500 crashes on the Southern State Parkway each year since 2016 and issued, on average, more than 5,800 speeding tickets to motorists annually during that time period.

Thus far in 2021, State Police have responded to 1,630 crashes on the Southern State and issued 3,326 speeding tickets, the figures show.

"The Southern State Parkway is our top traffic enforcement priority on Long Island due to the extremely high traffic volumes and history of crashes, and we enforce the law on the parkway as we do on all other roadways," said State Police spokesman Beau Duffy.

Several times per year, Duffy said, State Police devote additional resources on the parkway to curb aggressive driving.

"However, our troopers report that many drivers continue to travel at unsafe speeds on a road that was not designed to handle high speed traffic," he said. "Our troopers know all too well the tragedies that result from speeding and aggressive driving, and those tragedies are avoidable."

Since 2016, State Police have also issued nearly 100 tickets to Southern State motorists for reckless driving, a misdemeanor that requires a driver to be beyond negligent — a high threshold that many incidents don't meet, officials said.

Transportation experts said while the parkway — built in the 1920s as a route for day-tripping New York City residents to Jones Beach and other outdoor locales — is poorly designed and unfit for Long Island's modern traffic, there is little that can be done prevent accidents fueled by reckless driving.

AAA Northeast spokesman Robert Sinclair Jr. says the Southern State is "devoid of modern transportation engineering standards" and is largely unfixable outside of flattening the 25-mile roadway and widening its lanes.

"Without a doubt the Southern State Parkway is bad. But if you have people driving recklessly it doesn't help," Sinclair said. "They could drive recklessly on the best engineered roadway around … but bad driving on any road is going to make the problems."

Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a regional smart growth planning group, said "you can't design your way out of reckless and really damaging and devastating actions by individuals."

State Department of Transportation spokesman Stephen Canzoneri said Monday's crash "appears to be the result of activity having nothing to do with the configuration of the road."

The department recently completed a report to determine if entrance and exit ramps on the parkway need to be reconfigured to deter wrong-way driving, which has been responsible for several fatal parkway crashes.

"The study confirms that the countermeasures in place meet or exceed national engineering standards for deterring such incidents," said Canzoneri, adding that wrong-way crashes examined in the study were all attributable to impaired driving.

A second department study, examining the parkway’s mainline for potential fixes and enhancements, is scheduled for completion later this year.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.