Newsday/nextLI town hall on Long Island's dangerous roads

Our town hall on LI's dangerous roads

We would like to thank all of you who came out to Newsday/nextLI’s Dangerous Roads town hall! It was great to meet you and hear your concerns in person at Newsday's multimedia facility after hundreds of Long Islanders submitted online.

Our panel of Newsday journalists walked us through their coverage and data collection for this ongoing series and listened to ideas from the audience. Here are some highlights:

NewsdayTV’s Shari Einhorn

“I did a ride along with the state police... and they pulled over a driver driving on speaker phone – raise your hands how often you see this – driving on speakerphone but holding the phone. So the message is still clearly not getting across. The simplest thing. That boggles my mind, so you’re making the effort to speak on speakerphone but you’re still holding it in your hands.”

 Alfonso Castillo, Newsday Transportation Reporter

“All those dots that you saw up there in that map … just breathtaking. All of those are a story of somebody having an accident, often being killed. I'm sure a lot of people in this room have personally suffered losses. If you haven't, I'm sure you know somebody and how devastating that is...I think that the street racing and, and the takeovers are especially frustrating and kind of really make Long Islanders' blood boil.”

Sign up for Castillo's Dangerous Roads newsletter here.

 David Schwartz, Newsday Deputy Editor

“When you step back and you look at [the crash database and map], it hits you that this is something that affects every Long Islander. We're a big diverse Island here. We all have different things we care about, but the roads are one of the things that bind us.” 

 Karthika Namboothiri, Newsday Data Solutions Journalist

“I think we assume that there's this randomness to when crashes happen, but with the data we were able to see that especially on Long Island Fridays tend to be when there are most crashes and around summertime… when there's more people on the road. Another interesting thing was the evening rush hour had twice the number of crashes than the morning rush hour, which could possibly be because it's low visibility. It could be because people are tired after work. We've all seen that.”

Peter Gill, Newsday Transportation Reporter

“The way our communities are built, people have to be on the road a lot. There's a lot of driving that goes on. Many of our roadways were not necessarily built for this day and age where people are driving, you know, 70 miles an hour. And, the road designs are also a factor.”

What did the audience have to say?

We heard from hundreds of readers. Many of you shared your experiences and attended our event to in-person. Here's what some of you had to say:

• Driver’s education: Deborah Roberts is a retired eyecare professional who says that driver’s license renewals are too far apart. In 2008, New York changed the length of renewals from three to eight years.
• Motorcycle awareness: Jim Barr is part of Long Island ABATE, American Bikers for Awareness Training, and spoke about how two-thirds of motorcyclists are killed in collisions due to automobiles turning left in front of them. ABATE’s mission is to educate drivers and future drivers to look out for motorcycles in order to ensure safety for everyone on the roads.
• Driver distraction: Robert Sinclair worked for AAA for over a decade and he says advancements in vehicles have created more and more distractions over the years.
• Poorly designed roads: Noel Wong drives on the roads for work and he says the Southern State Parkway’s design consistently causes fatal accidents and the many memorials along the road are proof of that.

We hope to continue these important conversations. If you have an experience to share with us about the roads here on Long Island, we would love to hear from you. Share here.