In May, 2003, Newsday published a 12-day series of articles entitled “Death On The Roads.” Information resulted from a year-long investigation. Presented below are some of the facts and statistics excerpted from several of the series’ articles.

“Long Island's Killer Roads” (Newsday, May 5, 2003):

• On Long Island, an average of five people die on the roads each week. Collisions claim roughly 275 lives each year on Long Island. That's the equivalent of a Boeing 757 crashing annually, and it's more than five times the number of murders.
• Sixty percent of all crashes resulted from mistakes such as ignoring traffic controls, running off the road, turning left in front of an oncoming vehicle or driving drunk.” Although Newsday cites bad drivers as the reason, a more concise explanation would also include roadway design. For example, roundabouts reduce accidents by 50% to 90% over intersections with traffic signals. Those crashes involved with ignoring traffic controls or turning left in front of an oncoming vehicle simply could not happen at a roundabout.
• Congestion and poorly designed roads add to the problem. In the past 20 years, the numbers of licensed drivers and registered vehicles have increased by about 23 percent in the region, but road capacity has remained virtually unchanged. "Since World War II, I don't think there's a single year when traffic volume has not increased, and it's almost a flat trend in the number of miles of roadway available for those travelers," said Richard Retting, a transportation engineer with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “The fact that you have growth in traffic and a near lack of new roadways or roadway expansion exacerbates the problem -- that many more drivers are competing for space.”
• Pedestrians contend with cars -- and lose. In 2000, nearly a quarter of the people who died in Long Island traffic accidents were pedestrians -- more than twice the national average. The reasons were many: Long Island's roadways are designed to facilitate vehicle flow, not foot traffic. Yet government spends hardly any transportation funds to safeguard pedestrians and bicyclists -- one study said New York State annually spends only 52 cents per person.

“The Island's Deadliest” (Newsday, May 11,2003)

• More people die in crashes [on State Route 25] there than on any other Long Island road. From 1996 through 2001, a total of 110 lives were lost.
• In 2001, there were more deaths on Route 25 than on the LIE and all of Long Island's parkways combined. In fact, Newsday's analysis of fatal accidents found that the death rate on Route 25 is seven times higher than the rate on the expressway.
• Experts say many of the smashups occur because Jericho Turnpike has almost no median barriers to prevent head-on collisions and there are continuous entrances and exits to strip malls. And at night, flashy neon signs often divert motorists' attention from highway route markers.
• About three-quarters of Route 25's victims are drivers and their passengers.
• Of the 110 people who died on the road from 1996 to 2001 in Nassau-Suffolk, 95 lost their lives in Suffolk County.
• From Syosset to Middle Island, it is strip-mall alley -- a nearly unbroken chain of shopping centers, auto-body shops and fast-food joints, with virtually no sidewalks, parking lots in front of stores and only a painted double yellow line separating east and westbound vehicles whizzing past each other.
• Experts say that if you were asked to design a bad highway you might well come up with something like Jericho Turnpike. State officials and independent road engineers agree that every driveway leading into a strip mall is a crash waiting to happen. This is particularly true if you try to take a left turn into a parking lot by crossing several lanes of fast-moving, oncoming traffic. From 1996 through 2000, nearly a third of all fatal crashes on Route 25 involved left turns. This was double the proportion for Long Island as a whole, where fewer than one fatal crash in six involved a vehicle turning left.
• Newsday concluded: “As development continues eastward through Brookhaven and the twin forks of the East End, if no new limited access roads are built and towns do not change their zoning policies, experts say the result will be more Jericho Turnpikes -- and more deaths.”

“Pedestrian Peril” (Newsday, May 12, 2003)

• In Newsday's study of traffic deaths that year [2000], pedestrians represented 30 percent of fatalities in crowded Nassau, compared with 22 percent in roomier Suffolk. Both figures were noticeably higher than the national average of 11 percent.
• John Kaehny, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for New York's pedestrians and cyclists, warns against focusing on pedestrian error while ignoring the challenges created by road design.
• “There's a blame-the-victim mentality that's in place by police departments and state DOTs and planning departments,” Kaehny said. “Town planners and town mayors and the police are used to getting around in cars all time. They want to maximize traffic capacity and ensure smooth traffic flow. It's not about making sure people who walk are safe.”
• The biggest problem, according to Lee Koppelman, executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Board, is that Long Island's routes were never intended for foot traffic.
• “It's not surprising that people are getting killed, because pedestrians are in areas that absolutely are not provided for pedestrian use,” Koppelman said. “The roads are designed for automobiles. The shoulders of the roads are designed for automobiles. If people want to travel by foot, they have to do it in a travel way in competition with automobiles.”
• The location of the majority of pedestrian fatalities emphasizes the issue of road design: More than half the pedestrians struck by cars were not at an intersection, although most of them were trying to cross the road. Forty-four percent of pedestrians who were struck at an intersection were crossing in the absence of a crosswalk or pedestrian signal.
• Long Island's county and town government structure contributes to the challenges that pedestrians confront.
• “On Long Island, the biggest problem is the fragmentation of accountability among towns and villages and the county and state,” Kaehny said. “No one is charged with protecting the pedestrian. It comes out in lots of little decisions -- how do you design entrances to shopping malls or grocery stores. The odds are the person who approves the plan doesn't care about pedestrians.”
• Charles Bartha, Commissioner of Public Works for Suffolk County, said the county decides when to install pedestrian aids on a case-by-case basis. Ribeira said Nassau's approach is similar. “We don't have a written policy,” Ribeira said. The state also assesses projects individually, based on certain thresholds.
• “There has to be a minimum of 100 pedestrians per hour over a four-hour period for the state to install a traffic signal with a pedestrian signal and crosswalk” on a state road, DOT spokeswoman Eileen Peters said. The ideal design solution, said Koppelman, is providing pedestrians and cyclists with their own areas that separate -- and thus protect -- them from cars. “Segregated walkways, segregated bike lanes and overpasses, particularly on the well-traveled or dangerous crossovers -- this is what is required, and this hasn't been done,” he said.

“British Pedestrian Model Saves Lives” (Newsday, May 12, 2003)

• When judged according to population, traffic deaths were 60 percent lower in Britain than in the United States. Not only are British drivers less likely to die in crashes, British pedestrians are less likely to be run over. The pedestrian death rate in Britain is 12 percent lower than in the United States
• [In England] zoning laws prohibit most strip-mall development -- the scene of many fatal crashes on many United States highways. Roundabouts, or traffic circles, are also prevalent and have the effect of "calming" traffic as well as often controlling intersections better than traffic lights
• Another difference that makes for safety is the lack of strip-mall roads like Jericho Turnpike. Strip commercial development along highways, which cause thousands of fatalities in the United States as motorists try to turn in and out of parking lots, is a violation of British zoning laws. In England most businesses are limited to town centers.
• Also, all British four-lane highways must have a median strip to prevent turns into oncoming traffic. If a driver wants to get to the other side of such a road he or she “can turn at the next roundabout. It adds a little bit [of time] to the journey, but it makes everything safer,” Hills said.