Albany must act now to brake Southern State speed

For too many years, Long Island motorists have known the treacherous stretch of the Southern State Parkway between Exits 17 and 32 as “Blood Alley.” Last year, a study commissioned by the Long Island Contractors Association highlighted numbers showing why the parkway — in its entirety — carries an increasingly lethal reputation.

Accident data from 2012 showed there were 1.1 fatal collisions per mile along the 25.5-mile road, built nearly a century ago — compared to only .21 per mile on the Northern State Parkway. Since then, the numbers have grown more grim. In 2019, there were 1,138 accidents on the Southern State resulting in injury or death, compared to 983 in 2012, marking a 16% uptick, the association's study said.

That is alarming. Full-fledged monitoring, surveillance and action is overdue.

The best hope for making the parkway safer right now sits with state legislation newly introduced by Assemb. Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont). As drafted, the bill declares the parkway “a targeted high crash location, designated as a highway safety corridor, where motorists are exposed to increased levels of enforcement and increased penalties for moving violations relating to unsafe driving behavior.” Local and state highway enforcement agencies would have to agree in writing to provide “visible, sustained enforcement.”

Speed cameras would be used to catch offenders and trigger fines. They are already deployed, but only in work zones. The safety emergency on the Southern State has reached the point where it is superfluous to balk at the negligible civil-liberties implications. Warning signs are mandated, so the safety program shouldn't catch motorists unaware or cause a backlash.

Crashes on the parkway vary widely in cause and location, but each illustrates the urgency for change.

The past two years stand out horribly in Southern State annals. In one instance, 75-year-old Richard Riggs was killed and another motorist injured when two underage drivers, 15 and 16, wove recklessly in and out of traffic at high speeds in stolen SUV’s until one of them struck the victims’ cars. The pair have been charged with manslaughter. More recently, Osmar Vasquez, a 17-year-old West Babylon High School student, died when the driver of a Nissan Altima in which he was a passenger slammed it into trees after veering off the road.

Tougher enforcement is long past due. Surely, the road’s design presents hazards. But the likelihood of a full reconfiguration is too remote to offer a chance to save lives any time soon. Let's start with the wild speeding.

As of Friday, the Assembly bill did not yet have a sponsor in the State Senate. In both houses, majority Democrats face a blunt test — whether they want to address a life-or-death situation on Long Island or not. This is apolitical, and the tools for change are available, as the ambulance sirens seem to wail louder every week on the Southern State.