Dangerous Roads newsletter: Education tops the wish list for road safety

Here are some actual homework assignments I’ve helped my ninth grader son with over the current school year:

• Examining how natural selection has played a role in New York City rats’ ability to digest pizza.
• Shooting a video of my kid preparing a mango smoothie while he narrated the process in Spanish.
• Watching the 1999 animated classic "The Iron Giant" on VHS, and then analyzing why specific camera angles were used.

While I appreciate the value of a diverse curriculum in shaping a well-rounded young person, like many parents and students, I’ve questioned the utility of some classroom lessons in the real world.

And yet, one of the most valuable lessons that young people could learn remains largely absent from their classrooms — how to stay safe while walking to and from school.

Discussions about potential solutions to prevent crashes typically include some mention of the "three E's" — enforcement, engineering and education. But, too often, it seems that last E gets less priority, even though it may be the one most within our grasp to address.

At Newsday’s recent town hall event on potential solutions for Long Island’s dangerous roads, the importance of teaching road safety to young people was repeatedly brought up, including by Iesha Kyles, whose 15-year-old son, Amir Porterfield, was fatally struck by a vehicle while crossing the street on his way back from Copiague High School in 2023.

"I don’t think we ever taught our kids how to cross the street. It’s not a conversation that’s had — the importance of [making] eye contact with the driver," Kyles said through tears at the Dec. 10 forum at Newsday’s Melville studios. "I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that’s talked about a lot."

When I asked our panel of experts for one thing that Long Island could get started on right away to make its roads safer, Robert Sinclair Jr., senior public affairs manager at AAA Northeast, said at the top of his wish list was "some sort of universal education program" that would span from elementary school children walking to and from school, to teenagers starting to drive, to adult drivers.

Sinclair noted that his organization already regularly visits classrooms to teach road safety upon being invited. But making those lessons required learning would expand their reach and potentially save many more lives.

"We have to educate ourselves," Sinclair said. "It’s hard to fix the roads. It’s hard to do a lot of things. But if we change our attitude, it will go a long way toward making a big difference."

But not everyone agrees about how education should be prioritized relative to those two other E's. One planning expert I spoke to immediately after the town hall suggested that focusing on teaching kids how to increase their odds of survival on our dangerous roads, rather than doing the difficult engineering and enforcement work to make them less dangerous, signaled a defeatist mentality.

Of course, a comprehensive plan to reduce crashes should include all the E’s. But it should also look for quick wins, wherever possible, to avoid the need for what I’ve heard some people call the "fourth E”: emergency response.

Readers speak up

This week’s reader email comes from someone who believes speeding and distracted driving are two of the biggest factors contributing to crashes on Long Island.

For years I traveled five major roadways every day, and consistently witnessed excessive speeds and drivers on their phones. As I sit on my front lawn during the spring and summer months, I witness speeding on my residential street every day and people consistently doing the head bob on their phones (and it occurs during the winter and fall as well!).

Greater patrol presence and stiffer fines and consequences, I believe, are the only ways to combat these trends. I also don’t understand why speed cameras cannot be implemented in those areas that see greater levels of speeding and reckless driving. Something has to be done now.

Alan Quackenbush, Sayville

How often do you notice inattentive drivers on Long Island’s roads? Let us know at roads@newsday.com.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.