Deadly Long Island drunken driving toll of 763 over a decade

Drunken driving, a scourge that killed 763 people on Long Island from 2012 to 2021, isn’t letting up, statistics show.

Among those killed were 13 young people under the age of 18, according to available data from the Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research.

Over 9,400 more people were hurt, ranging from serious to minor injuries, with advocates calling drunken driving an epidemic that won’t stop.

“It’s a horrible loss of life,” said Erica Linn, who is on the regional advisory board of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and is pushing for state legislation to help drive down the number of crashes.

“How many innocent lives have to be taken before we do something about this?” she said.

Two 14-year-old Roslyn Middle School students, Drew Hassenbein and Ethan Falkowitz, were killed and two other teens were injured late Wednesday when their car was hit by a wrong-way driver in Jericho. The driver, Amandeep Singh, 34, of Roslyn, was arrested and charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, as well as other charges that included driving while intoxicated.

The tragedies are made worse simply knowing these crashes are preventable, Linn said.

In 2021, alcohol-related crashes claimed 87 lives, the most since 2015, when 106 people were killed on the Island.

In 2021, 49 people under the age of 18 were either injured or killed in alcohol-related crashes.

Preliminary data shows that 74 people were killed in such crashes last year, still far too high, advocates said,

Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman with AAA Northeast, said that there are a combination of factors at play, including more people turning to drugs to cope with stress, more cars on the road since 2020 and poor engineering.

“Combine all those factors and you've got a formula for disaster,” Sinclair said. He said that AAA driver improvement program instructors stress that drivers need to keep their focus on the road.

“Behind the wheel you have to be calm and relaxed, and not agitated by something that might be bothering you.”

For Linn, the issue is personal. She recounted how she lost her own parents in 2016 when a wrong-way drunken driver plowed into their car in Westchester.

“I never saw my mother again. She died on an operating table of internal bleeding and I saw the surgeon who operated her covered in my mother's blood,” Linn said.

Linn said MADD is hoping to get legislation through, including one that aims to lower the blood alcohol content legal limit of .08 to .05, because that’s when impairment occurs. According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, “a BAC of more than .05 percent is legal evidence that you are impaired, a BAC of .08 percent or higher is evidence of intoxication."

The second legislation she hopes will pass is requiring all offenders to have cars with alcohol interlock systems. According to the CDC, these devices reduce driving while impaired repeat offenses by about 70%.

Linn said that in New York, only 24% of offenders have this technology installed.

Linn said these deaths impact entire communities. She even has a connection to the two 14-year old Roslyn students killed. A cousin who knew one of the victims called her in tears in need of counseling.

“These children's lives were stolen. Absolutely stolen from them," Linn said.