Hempstead Village pedestrian deaths highlight chronic dangers of walking Long Island's roads

In her neat Levittown home, her son’s ashes in an urn by the stairs, Gina Varela recalled the night he was hit and killed by a bus on a Hempstead Village road.

"I was in shock," said Varela, 58. "I didn’t even cry. I didn’t even do anything. I was like — I couldn’t believe it."

Pierre Angelo Rodriguez, 34, took Nov. 29, 2021, off from his job as a FedEx driver and spent the day in Queens. Hurrying to catch one of the night’s last buses to Levittown, where he lived with his mother and younger brother, Rodriguez crossed West Columbia Street near Main Street in Hempstead at around 11 p.m. — mid-block, with no crosswalk or signal. A westbound NICE bus struck him.

The downtown Hempstead neighborhood where Rodriguez was killed was the single most dangerous on Long Island for pedestrians and cyclists from 2019 to 2023, according to a Newsday analysis of state traffic data.

Three of the village's neighborhoods, or census tracts, were among Long Island's 11 most dangerous to walk or bike as measured by crashes that caused serious injury or death to a person not inside a vehicle.

Across Hempstead — the state's most populous village, with about 60,000 residents — 86 pedestrians and cyclists were killed or seriously injured over the five-year span, a rate of approximately one serious crash every three weeks, the data showed. The injury and death totals were more than double that of other hot spots like North Amityville, Baldwin and Brentwood.

Why are so many people getting hit in Hempstead? In interviews, experts pointed to infrastructure, socioeconomics and the presence of more arterial roads — wider and designed for higher capacity and higher speed than typical village streets. They also cited a legacy of planning, going back to before Robert Moses, that privileged driving over walking, and a jurisdictional checkerboard that puts control of area roads variously under state, county or village authority.

The problems faced by this 4-square-mile village underscore problems of pedestrian safety that remain chronic across Long Island and nationwide, even as safety for motorists improves. Just within the past 10 days, four people walking or jogging have been killed in communities as varied as downtown Huntington and rural Flanders. 

In 2023, the last year for which full data was available, 82 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in Nassau and Suffolk counties. That’s roughly as many as have been killed yearly since the 1990s. Motor vehicle occupant deaths nearly halved during that period.

Nationally between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose 80% while all other traffic fatalities increased 13%, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Experts say pedestrian risk may be rising because Americans are aging, driving more, and driving more SUVs — which are larger, higher off the ground and likelier than passenger cars to kill pedestrians.

Local leaders say they have acted to improve safety. Before she left office in 2024, former Nassau County Legis. Siela Bynoe, now a state senator, secured $41 million in county funds for roadway improvements, though construction has yet to begin, she said.

Hempstead Mayor Waylyn Hobbs Jr. said the number of crashes for this year, by late September, was down to 98 from 154 in 2024. Police cracking down on speeders and aggressive drivers, he said, has been a "major" tool.

Village officers issued 23,109 moving violations this year by late September, about 48% more than they had by that point in 2024, Hobbs said.

He also credited outreach to residents about the dangers of jaywalking and posting more traffic guards at critical intersections, like those in front of schools.

"We are bringing the numbers down so people don’t feel comfortable speeding in the village," he said. "We will make sure people pay attention to the signage."

On some roads, like North Franklin in front of the Academy Charter schools, radar-equipped signs flash motorists’ speed to encourage them to slow down. But one fall afternoon, a reporter watched vehicles routinely exceeding the 20 mph school zone speed limit, with some traveling nearly twice that speed.

Urban planners who study pedestrian safety say that curbing injuries and deaths requires more than just enforcement.

A planned downtown revitalization in the village, aided by a $10 million state grant, would employ traffic-calming strategies like widening sidewalks and narrowing streets. It would also attract new businesses, housing and cultural centers, steps village officials hope will add foot traffic.

"It’s a very clear example of why we should be making investments in our Main Streets, to have activity," said Dan Burden, a Port Townsend, Washington-based planner and walkability advocate who has consulted with Vision Long Island, a smart-growth organization, on its studies of downtown Hempstead. "The more people you see walking, the more motorists are going to behave."

‘Difficult to get through’

More than half of all serious crashes in Hempstead Village during the period Newsday examined occurred on one of four busy roads through the center of the downtown, once Nassau County’s commercial hub. They are Peninsula Boulevard, North and South Franklin Street, Front Street and Fulton Avenue.

Franklin and Peninsula are Nassau County roads. Front and Fulton, also called Hempstead Turnpike, fall under county or state jurisdiction when they pass through the village.

Nassau County maintains about 17% of road mileage in Hempstead Village. For villages across Long Island, Suffolk and Nassau typically maintain only 10.9% of the roads.

A spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, Stephen Canzoneri, wrote in an email that the department controls only a small portion of village roads but had made "significant enhancements at key locations" in recent years, including upgrades to nine traffic signals and a new pedestrian crosswalk with reflective signage near a public park.

Next year, Canzoneri said, the state plans to upgrade more than 70 sidewalk ramps and install "highly reflective pavement markings" for lanes and crosswalks.

Newsday sought to ask Nassau County officials about the pace of planned improvements on roads they maintain within Hempstead Village, but Chris Boyle, a spokesman for County Executive Bruce Blakeman, did not respond to multiple requests for information or comment.

Of the 84 Hempstead crashes between 2019 and 2023 in which people not inside a vehicle were seriously hurt or killed, 45 involved a person crossing without a signal or crosswalk or against a signal, the Newsday analysis shows.

But a person's choice to jaywalk can be influenced by the streetscape.

In Hempstead, pedestrians trying to reach a shop across a major road might have to walk hundreds of feet to reach a crosswalk, then hundreds of feet back on the other side of the road to reach their destination. At some intersections, even on the busiest streets, there are crosswalks with no pedestrian signals or no crosswalks at all.

"Even if someone’s not following traffic laws, or even if you make a bad decision, that shouldn’t lead to a fatal mistake," said Dr. Adam Stright, a trauma surgeon at NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island in Mineola, which treats cases from the village and surrounding area.

Even if someone’s not following traffic laws, or even if you make a bad decision, that shouldn’t lead to a fatal mistake.

— Dr. Adam Stright, NYU Langone Hospital—Long Island trauma surgeon

Stright was principal investigator on a study published last May by NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine, Northwell Health and NYC Health + Hospitals that found the village was the biggest source of intakes to NYU Langone’s trauma center. He and his colleagues found a correlation between a ZIP code’s pedestrian injuries and its score on the social deprivation index, a demographic measurement based on factors like poverty, employment, housing and car ownership. They believe they were the first to trace this association in a suburban setting. 

More than a fifth of Hempstead Village households have no vehicles available, versus just 5.9% Islandwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

A review of scientific literature on disproportionate pedestrian risk in lower-income and minority communities by Florida Atlantic and Columbia universities' researchers, also published earlier this year, found trip purpose was key: "Affluent households walk primarily for leisure and recreation. ... Lower-income households, by contrast, walk principally for utilitarian reasons, making them less able to avoid unsafe environments."

Walking trips to work, church or the supermarket might be seen as non-negotiable. The same could be said of school — especially in Hempstead, where many of the district’s 6,000 students get to school by walking. For many people, getting to any of those destinations might entail crossing one or more of the four big roads.

Antonio Kelley, a photographer who has lived in the village for 23 years, likened them to "little highways." He recalled participating in a walking tour of village roads in 2022 with Vision Long Island and encountering a driver who seemed too distracted to notice the group of 10 to 15 pedestrian investigators.

"It was difficult to get through, and we had people in vests with stop signs," Kelley said. "How is it for regular pedestrians and kids?"

Hempstead school district’s superintendent did not respond to interview requests.

More lanes, less ‘visual friction’

Franklin and Peninsula funnel motorists between Long Island’s North and South shores. Front and Fulton carry them east and west. The state Department of Transportation designates three of the four as its highest traffic volume corridors, designed to "carry a high proportion of the total urban area travel on a minimum mileage."

These types of roads lead to higher vehicle speeds, and that means more pedestrian risk. Speed limits for stretches of the four big roads are as high as 40 mph, but in 2022, the last year available, the typical vehicle speed on one of them was as high as 46.9 mph.

According to one study, the risk of pedestrian fatality was only 5% for collisions at 20 mph; at 40 mph, the risk was 85%.

Stretches of the four big roads also lack on-street parking, commercial development, trees or other elements the Institute of Transportation Engineers in a 2023 report described as "visual friction" that may induce slower vehicle speed.

Hempstead Village has another characteristic that may make crashes likelier than in other communities, said Cynthia Brown, executive director of New York Coalition for Transportation Safety: a concentration of transit terminals, courts, and town and village offices.

"There are so many points of conflict that it’s just not safe," she said.

One of the most obvious fixes, Brown said, would be to do what many college towns upstate have done and reduce the speed limit everywhere in the village to 25 mph. But, she said, "then you have to enforce it."

Additionally, road design choices made a century ago may contribute to crash clusters.

Research shows, for instance, that wider streets increase the risk of pedestrian strikes because they take longer to cross, increasing exposure, and because wider lanes may contribute to increased driver speed.

All of the four big roads carry, for long stretches, at least four lanes of traffic; segments of Peninsula carry six. Vision’s auditors have measured some lanes of roads in the village at 12 feet across — 2 feet wider than necessary, they said, the extra space encouraging drivers to speed up.

Front Street and Fulton Avenue began to be widened as early as 1938, making it easier for automobiles to travel briskly on roads that once accommodated primarily horse-drawn carts, said village historian Reine Bethany. In the 1950s, Newsday reported on several road widening projects, including one to "speed and facilitate traffic" near the Abraham & Straus department store.

Nassau County authorities, trying to aid shoppers and solve the problem of traffic congestion in the village’s downtown business district, sought advice from master planner Moses. Moses’ solution involved extending and reconfiguring Peninsula Boulevard from a surface street typical for the area at the time into a six-lane thoroughfare.

Businesses and churches were razed to permit the reconfiguration, but from the remade Peninsula, motorists could access many of the other major roads that passed through the village. Starting in 1956, many used it to get to and from Roosevelt Field mall, via Clinton Street.

"Forget about village commerce — you didn’t need it anymore, because they were building Roosevelt Field," Bethany said. "There was less reason for drivers to slow down and stop here."

‘Unpleasant and many times dangerous’

In interviews, several village merchants said they observed motorists speeding or driving dangerously outside their shops. Employees at Sno-Haus, the ski and snowboard shop with an outlet on North Franklin Street, said out-of-control vehicles have actually driven through their store’s walls.

On South Franklin Street, Clariona Griffith, a former village trustee who runs Minime Kiddy Daycare, said: "I can’t tell you how many times I almost got hit myself."

"Solving the issue means widening the sidewalks, giving our children a place to ride bikes, and giving our seniors a safe place where they don’t have to worry about a car running off the street on these wide roads," Griffith said.

Jonathan Prevost, 33, a community advocate who lives in Maryland but grew up in Baldwin, has requested local pedestrian safety measures. One resulted in the village repainting crosswalks and "SCHOOL 20 MPH" road markers on Milburn Avenue near Lawrence Road Middle School in 2022.

"I went to school here," he said in a recent interview in Hempstead, "so obviously, I want the kids to get home safely." 

Walking in this streetscape is "unpleasant and many times dangerous," Vision auditors wrote in a 2022 report prepared for AARP that grew from that year’s audit. They noted long crosswalks at major intersections — one, on North Franklin crossing Fulton, is roughly 110 feet, according to a 2020 audit — and narrow or nonexistent sidewalks in places.

At the intersection of Peninsula and Washington Street, where children who live north of Peninsula cross south across the boulevard to reach Schultz Middle School, village officials attempted to place signage to improve safety, the auditors wrote, but "the signage was removed by [Nassau County Department of Public Works] since it is a county road."

Nassau officials did not respond to Newsday asking about the auditors' assertion. 

Jurisdictional issues are not uncommon, said Eric Alexander, Vision’s director.

"When you’re trying to change an intersection that’s a county or state road, that can span multiple administrations," he said.

Prevost said getting crosswalks repainted at the intersection of village-controlled Harold Avenue, town-controlled Argyle Avenue, and county-controlled Nassau Road in 2022 took reaching out to all three entities multiple times: "The Town of Hempstead won’t do Nassau work. Nassau won’t do Village of Hempstead work."

Village officials said over the summer that they were seeking a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to fund the creation of a "safety action plan" to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries.

Officials are still awaiting a decision on the application.

Stright, the doctor, said he and his colleagues are trying to educate the public they serve about minimizing danger to pedestrians. But "if we trained all the people out there, and everyone listened, they would still be at increased risk in this ZIP code because of the way this environment is built," he said.

Vision recommends traffic-calming strategies including narrowing lanes, adding medians, building better crosswalks and adding bulb-outs — curb extensions to narrow the street and shorten pedestrian walking distance.

All of them, Alexander said, are intended to "get the cars to slow down by design — not because there’s a speed camera there, but because it’s uncomfortable to drive fast. Right now, it’s too comfortable to drive fast."

When Vision began to push for these strategies 20 years ago in towns and villages across Long Island, Alexander said his group often faced resistance.

"The people I was meeting with were from another era — the pedestrian was not seen or heard," he said.

But about 40 traffic-calming projects are now in place across Long Island, he said.

In her sitting room in Levittown one recent afternoon, Varela said she wished more people walking at night took care to wear bright colors. She said she wished the village had more safety infrastructure on its streets.

Like many survivors of those killed or seriously harmed in crashes on Long Island roads, she has sued. The lawsuit, which alleges that negligence by the bus operator and other defendants contributed to her son’s death, is ongoing. In court filings, a lawyer for the defendants denied the accusations.

The son Varela remembers loved good food, basketball and watching pro wrestling with his little brother. He helped pay the mortgage on the family home.

She loves him so much sometimes she wants to forget him. Two weeks after he died, she donated all his clothes.

"It wasn’t that I was throwing him out," she said. "At that moment in time, I didn’t want to see any of his clothes, because I didn’t want to remember him, at that point. I didn’t cry when he passed. I just couldn’t cry. As time goes by, I cry more, and I remember more, and it hurts the same."

When she comes home, now, "I don’t want to go out, most of the time. I just sit and try to watch TV. I think I find comfort in that. I forget about everything."