Work zones, LEDs spotlight dangers

Failure to consider the safety of others, let alone oneself, fuels public dangers. This is especially so on Long Island’s roads and highways where speeding, aggressive driving, drunken driving, drugged driving and texting behind the wheel are known to cost lives, injuries and damage.

Now it turns out that speed cameras in Nassau and Suffolk counties, during their first six months of use in work zones, caught the highest number of violators of any region in the state. Out of 133,640 tickets issued statewide, Long Island was the source of 41,709, or 31%.

Even as some drivers bemoan the fines as a money grab, the safety rationale for this program was clear from the start. During 2021 in New York, a total of 378 “work zone intrusions” resulted in more than 50 injuries on state Transportation Department roads and the Thruway system. Hopefully, the fines will serve as a reminder and a deterrent. “The numbers are pretty staggering. It seems that so many people are speeding at construction zones,” Robert Sinclair Jr., spokesman for AAA Northeast, told Newsday.

Construction and maintenance crews must perform tasks alongside fast-moving traffic — a fact horrifically dramatized March 22 when six workers, including two brothers and a father and son, were killed alongside a stretch of I-695 in Maryland. Two drivers had been speeding approaching the work zone and collided, sending one of their cars hurtling into the roadside group.

Other dangers on highways and streets are more complicated to confront than those created by excessive speed. Night glare from super-bright headlights can vex drivers, forcing them to struggle to see, or look away to the side or move over on the road. No quick fix to that is in the offing. Motorists’ reluctance to follow proper rules and practices often comes into play. As Newsday reported Monday, LED (light-emitting diode) headlamps are occasionally installed into headlamp fixtures on vehicles designed for less harsh and less powerful halogen bulbs using replacement kits banned and illegal to import to the U.S.

Motorist misuse is far from the whole issue, however. Newer vehicles come with LED’s installed, meant to improve visibility. Sometimes in the past, the lights have been mounted too high on pickups. Sometimes they are misaligned but not corrected. And bluer LED lamps are reported to pose more problems than others. In that regard, critics reasonably call for federal standards for automobile lighting, first set in the 1920s, to be reassessed. The goal should be enforcement of a sensible level and type of brightness.

Hopefully the auto industry, regulators and drivers themselves will focus on those struggling with a new kind of glare because one driver’s difficulty can become a disaster for others very suddenly.

“Blinded by the Light” and “Danger Zone” may be poetic song titles, but evocative phrases won't help you arrive alive. Smarter use of technology and saner speeds can light the way.