Long Island's 5 most dangerous intersections include crossings in Hempstead, Stony Brook

At one intersection in Hicksville, a billing clerk crossing Old Country Road was struck and killed after he dropped his car off at the mechanic. It was a route he took every day. 

In Lindenhurst, a man sought to understand how his brother died while trying to cross an intersection on an e-bike.

In Hempstead Village, a crossing guard kept her focus after she replaced a colleague who was hit near a charter school.

There is no other place on Long Island where its suburban driving culture is on full display — and where motorists and pedestrians are left so vulnerable — than at its busy intersections.

Crosswalks span wide-open, 12-lane roadways. Drivers rush through or navigate turn lanes amid arrows that flash green, yellow and red. People on foot hurry to beat countdown timers or try to cross without any measures in place to stop traffic.

Those factors, combined with speeding and human error, have contributed to hundreds of fatalities and serious injuries, and tens of thousands of crashes, over the years. 

Newsday, as part of its yearlong series on dangerous roads, analyzed crash data from intersections in Nassau and Suffolk counties for the 10-year period from 2014 to 2023. It looked more closely at five intersections that led the Island in crashes with serious injuries and fatalities. The data comes from the state Department of Transportation’s Crash Location and Engineering Analysis Repository database, compiled through law enforcement reports.

Serious injuries, as characterized by law enforcement agencies’ accident reports, include fractures, internal injuries, severe cuts and burns, and the inability to move from the scene of a crash without help. 

Over the 10-year span, these five intersections accounted for a combined 72 serious-injury and fatal crashes, and 2,139 crashes overall. Of those 72 crashes, 15 involved pedestrians and three involved bicyclists, according to the data.

These crossing points have some unique characteristics. One is a troublesome bottleneck. Two are in thriving villages. Others feature busy highways or straightaways where speeds increase. While some safety issues have been addressed and more are planned, solutions aren’t so easily reached because of a number of factors, including Long Islanders’ unceasing appetite to get behind the wheel.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all silver bullet,” said Elissa Kyle, placemaking director for Vision Long Island, a Northport-based planning organization. “It’s a complicated problem, so it’s got complicated solutions.”

Many Long Island intersections have become inherently more dangerous due to their sheer size, Kyle said. More lanes mean more vehicles and longer crossing times for pedestrians and bicyclists, she said. 

The state DOT has made or is planning to implement safety upgrades at the five intersections Newsday reviewed, agency spokesman Stephen Canzoneri said in an email. The upgrades include reflective pavement markings, more visible signage and raised pedestrian medians, as well as adjusted signals that give pedestrians enough time to cross, he said.

The agency works to “continuously review safety measures in place on all our highways, including those on Long Island, which has some of the busiest roads in the nation,” he said.

Kyle said that over the years, transportation design has reflected Long Island’s car-centric culture to an overwhelming point, leaving some intersections “almost beyond help.”

"This is the inevitable result when you build everything for cars,” she said. “Eventually you reach this point of needing 10 lanes of traffic in each direction. When you have to drive everywhere, the roads get bigger and bigger.”

And then so do the intersections.

“You start adding these multiple turn lanes because you’re trying to get a lot of people through the intersection in one light without making the lights too long, and the intersections just swell, which makes them inherently more dangerous,” Kyle said.

Studying serious injuries and fatalities should be a key focus in evaluating an intersection’s danger level, said Frank Pearson, director of transportation safety for Greenman-Pedersen, a Babylon-based consulting firm.

But Pearson, who spent more than 30 years with the state DOT, primarily as a regional traffic engineer, said all crashes should be examined. 

“The difference between a serious injury and a minor injury can be a matter of seconds,” he said.

Beyond road design flaws, human error is often a factor in crashes.

“People tend to — and this goes for pedestrians as well as drivers — choose convenience over safety,” he said. “That’s human nature. I don’t think people perceive the risks involved because they’ve done it so many times.”

Here are the five intersections Newsday determined to be the most dangerous over the 10-year span examined:

Old Country Road and Broadway, Hicksville

At dawn on Aug. 6, 2020, Steven Klenofsky dropped his car off at a mechanic in Hicksville and began walking to the Long Island Rail Road station. He had taken the route many times before, said his wife, Susan.

This time, at 5:25 a.m., when crossing Old Country Road at Broadway, he was struck by a driver operating a Hyundai Sonata. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital. Forty-six minutes after he was hit, a physician pronounced him dead, according to Nassau County police. 

That morning, detectives called Susan Klenofsky and told her that Steven had been struck by a car. Soon after, they were at her door. That’s when she learned that her husband had died. He was 67.

“We were hysterical,” Susan recalled.

A police spokesman said there was no criminality in the crash.

Steven and Susan were married in 1995 and established a life together on Ida Lane in North Babylon. They had three children. Since her husband’s death, Susan, now 67, said it is hard to mark milestones without him. Steven missed the high school graduation of his twins, and their daughter will graduate from college next year.

The intersection is in the middle of 24 lanes of traffic, including turn lanes, and is in the heart of Hicksville, about a mile from its train station. From 2014 to 2023, there were 13 serious-injury and fatal crashes there, state DOT data shows. Two people were killed and 12 were seriously hurt.

Since that summer day, Susan Klenofsky said, she tries to avoid the area. 

"I haven't been back there," she said. "It's almost like a trigger."

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, a woman waited several minutes for the walk signal at the intersection. After the extended pause, she tried to cross Old Country Road without the signal, got a few steps into the roadway and had to double back as turning traffic began to roar past.

Michael Ruvolo, the owner of Minuteman Press at the northeast corner of the crossroads, said he “can hear the crunch” of cars getting into crashes during the summer when his doors are open.

For pedestrians, crossing from one side of the street to another can be treacherous, he said.

“You’re definitely better off crossing somewhere else,” Ruvolo said.

So drivers and pedestrians can see more clearly at the intersection, the state DOT in 2020 adopted no-parking and no-stopping restrictions on Broadway. Pavement markings were repainted last year, the agency said.

Nassau County, which is responsible for Old Country Road, did not respond to questions concerning safety improvements at the intersection. 

Karl Schweitzer, a former fire chief and current historian for the Hicksville Fire Department, said the department responded to 10 crashes at the intersection last year — up from six in 2023 and seven in 2022.

Susan Klenofsky and her oldest son, Ethan, said they would like to see technology employed that automatically detects pedestrians and triggers a walk signal. 

She said that in the years since Steven's death, she has become more aware of those safety measures. 

"I stop at the stop signs, I make sure that no one is there," she said. "And I tell my kids the same things."

Veterans Memorial Highway and Old Nichols Road, Islandia

From his job at an Islandia cellphone dealership, Haider Malik sees several crashes every week at the intersection nearby.

It’s a complex interchange in which Veterans Highway — State Route 454 — splits Old Nichols Road to the east and East Suffolk Avenue to the west. Vehicles on Route 454 descend an overpass and approach from the south, and traffic from the nearby Long Island Expressway arrives from the north.

Cars making right turns from East Suffolk Avenue sometimes collide with cars making left turns from Old Nichols Road, Malik said.

“They go so fast, and they don’t stop for caution to see who’s turning left [from Old Nichols Road], so cars collide,” he said.

From 2014 to 2023, there were 14 serious-injury and fatal crashes at the intersection, state DOT data shows. Two people were killed and 12 were seriously hurt.

A utility pole at the southwest corner is covered with plastic flowers and a poster with a photograph of Joshua Cai Taylor, 20, of Central Islip. Taylor died from injuries he sustained in a 2023 crash when the motorcycle he was driving struck a truck at the intersection, police records show. Attempts to reach his family were unsuccessful. 

Safety concerns prompted state transportation officials in 2022 to add a second left-turn lane from Veterans Highway onto East Suffolk Avenue. The state also upgraded a traffic signal to include a protected left turn, allowing vehicles to turn only when there is a green arrow, Canzoneri said in an email.

A left-turn lane from Veterans Highway to Old Nichols Road was lengthened and a new center median barrier was installed, he said. Those upgrades cost about $600,000, he said.

The overpass, which spans LIRR tracks, is set for reconstruction beginning in 2028, Canzoneri said. The $20 million project will widen the road and add designated lanes for bicyclists and pedestrians, Newsday previously reported.

The Central Islip Fire Department responds to 30 to 50 calls annually at the intersection, Chief Vincent Plotino said in a phone interview.

“I just think it’s the speed of the drivers coming on Vets Highway, and they try to beat the light. … They get clobbered,” Plotino said. “They’re coming off the bridge pretty fast, and they’re trying to beat the light. They just hit each other.”

Newsday observed the intersection for roughly an hour on May 15. Within the first 20 minutes, a police vehicle responded to an apparent minor collision between two SUVs at the right-turn location Malik mentioned. 

Habibur Rhaman, who works at the Gulf gas station near the intersection, said the frequent crashes are bad for business.

“At that red light, there’s at least one or two crashes every week,” he told Newsday. “[I get] a lot of customers complaining.”

Jillian Gardner, 21, of Centereach, wound up in the hospital on Nov. 2, 2021, after a car collided with her vehicle at the intersection. Gardner was driving from Old Nichols Road toward Suffolk Avenue when an oncoming car tried to make a left from Suffolk Avenue onto Vets Highway, failing to yield to Gardner and causing the accident, according to a Suffolk County police report.

Gardner, a high school senior at the time, escaped with only some bruising and no serious injuries. But she is frightened to drive in that area.

“I’ve only driven on it once because I’m terrified to drive on it now,” she said in an interview. “I don’t go down that road at all now.”

Nicolls Road and State Route 347, Stony Brook

An eastbound ambulance slowed one recent afternoon on State Route 347 as it approached the intersection with Nicolls Road.

Sirens wailing and car horn blasting, the emergency vehicle from the Lakeland Ambulance Company waited for southbound and westbound traffic to stop before making the left-hand turn onto Nicolls Road.

Minutes later, a southbound Setauket Fire Department ambulance slowed on Nicolls before making the left turn onto Route 347.

And soon after, another Lakeland ambulance, followed by a Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office patrol car, approached the same intersection. Emergency lights flashing, both vehicles sat at a red light for nearly three minutes before the light changed and they could pass.

Local officials and residents say traffic jams — including many that slow emergency vehicles — are a frequent obstacle at the intersection, about 2.3 miles south of Stony Brook University Hospital.

The Setauket Fire Department responded to 180 calls at the intersection over the past decade, including crashes with less-serious injuries and minor vehicle damage, district manager David Sterne said in an interview.

“It’s a scary intersection with cars going really fast in both directions,” Sterne said.

State officials in March announced plans to build an overpass at the intersection. Construction on the $100 million to $140 million project is expected to start in 2028 and finish in 2031, officials said.

The bridge is expected to improve traffic flow at the notorious bottleneck by elevating Route 347, an east-west road, above the northbound and southbound lanes of Nicolls Road, officials said.

From 2014 to 2023, there were 14 serious-injury and fatal crashes at the intersection, state DOT data shows. One person was killed and 13 were seriously hurt.

Maryann Riggi, of Selden, said an overpass “would probably save lives.” She said her sons, John and Brandon, escaped uninjured from a two-car collision at the intersection on Oct. 4, 2015, when they were going to pick up their grandmother at Stony Brook University Hospital.

John, who was 25 at the time, and Brandon, then 20, were shaken by the experience, their mother said. She called the intersection “out of control” and said she spent years fighting her insurance company to be compensated for their injuries and medical bills.

“I thank God that my children came out of that alive,” Riggi said.

Emergency vehicles are equipped with a switch to override red lights in order to get through the intersection, Sterne said. But he said the switch is not effective when traffic stops across all lanes for a red light.

“It’s a long light,” Brookhaven Town Councilman Jonathan Kornreich said. “You can get stuck at that light sometimes for four or five minutes.”

North Franklin and Jackson streets, Hempstead Village

A whistle blast pierced the rumblings of car engines as a driver signaled a left turn at North Franklin and Jackson streets on a recent Monday afternoon. 

Crossing guard Bevelyn Monroe shouted “No!” at the driver who had missed or ignored the traffic sign indicating that left turns are illegal from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the intersection. The driver paused and abandoned the left turn, driving straight through instead.

“Sometimes people are so focused on where they’re going or maybe on their phones, and they’re not paying attention to what's being said to them,” Monroe said. “A lot of times the whistle will wake a person up and get their attention, and I think it also scares them too sometimes.”

Monroe said she began patrolling the spot in January, replacing a crossing guard who had been hit by a car. She still places herself squarely in the path of vehicles. “I don’t scare easily,” she said. 

Crossing guards come to the busy intersection as children arrive in the morning at The Academy Charter School on the northwest corner and after dismissal in the afternoon when students in purple and yellow uniforms crowd the sidewalks. The school serves students from kindergarten through high school. 

“It’s a high-traffic conduit as people seek to move north to south,” said State Sen. Siela Bynoe (D-Westbury). “Coupled with the proximity to the NICE bus station, the train station and the charter school, it makes it a high-trafficked area.”

From 2014 to 2023, there were 14 serious-injury and fatal crashes at the intersection, state DOT data shows. Two people were killed and 13 were seriously hurt.

Bynoe said before she left the Nassau County Legislature last year, she helped secure county funding to study the intersection and implement capital improvements for traffic calming.

“It’s an area that really has a high level of congestion and a lot of moving parts as parents seek to pick up their scholars,” Bynoe said.

North Franklin Street serves as a major artery for north- and southbound traffic. On an average day, some 24,000 vehicles pass through its intersection with Front Street, about four blocks to the south, according to state Department of Transportation traffic data from 2023.

From 2014 through 2023, North Franklin and Jackson streets tied for the second highest number of crashes involving pedestrians on Long Island, with 27, according to state data analyzed by Newsday. Only the intersection of North Franklin and Front streets had more, with 29.

On a Tuesday morning — Jan. 10, 2017,  at 6:43 a.m. — Ana Maria Solano de Neuman, 58, was walking across the North Franklin-Jackson intersection when she was struck by a driver who later tested positive for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office. The impact sent her body flying 100 feet and she died later from her injuries, according to the district attorney's office.

The driver pleaded guilty to second-degree vehicular manslaughter and driving while drug-impaired and was sentenced to 4 months in jail and 5 years’ probation, Newsday previously reported. 

Neuman was a widow and immigrant from El Salvador, said David Mejias, whose Glen Cove law firm represented her estate in a civil case brought against the driver. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount, Mejias said.

She “was a very lovely woman who worked at Target … who came to this country to live the American dream and try to support her family in El Salvador,” Mejias said.

Neuman didn’t drive and was walking to the bus station to go to work that morning, Mejias said.

“She didn’t have any family in this country who were [here] to give a victim impact statement or to talk about how it affected their family,” Mejias said. “When it came to the sentencing and the prosecution, she didn’t have a voice.”

Straight Path and Sunrise Highway, Lindenhurst

Dale Coolbaugh was riding an e-bike in Lindenhurst Village, attempting to cross Sunrise Highway at Straight Path in June 2022, when he was fatally struck by a moving vehicle. 

His brother, Donnie, sought to understand how exactly the collision occurred. He went to the scene of the crash and asked local workers if they had witnessed it. “We tried to figure this out and what went wrong and why, but I couldn’t get anywhere,” he said.

According to a Suffolk County police report, several witnesses said that Dale, 63, of West Babylon, did not have a green light. Police declared the case as noncriminal and the driver was not charged, according to the report.

“It is a dangerous intersection if you’re on foot or on a bicycle,” Coolbaugh said. “For some reason, he misinterpreted that car coming.”

The intersection is bursting with activity at any given moment. Including turn lanes, Sunrise Highway, a state roadway, is nine lanes wide there, while Straight Path, maintained by Suffolk County, is six lanes wide.

On all four corners are independent and chain businesses, including Popeyes, Dunkin’ and 7-Eleven. Also nearby is Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High. Several bus stops are in the area. The intersection has one timed pedestrian crosswalk, on the west side crossing Sunrise.

From 2014 to 2023, there were 17 serious-injury and fatal crashes at the intersection, state DOT data shows, making it the most dangerous crossroads on Long Island in terms of those statistics. Three people were killed and 19 seriously hurt; there were a total of 426 crashes at the site.

Among those hurt in the 14 serious-injury crashes were three children, pedestrians hit by a vehicle in 2019.

Vince McLeod, chief of the North Amityville Fire Department, which responds to calls at the intersection, said his department has been to 10 accidents there so far this year.

The state DOT noted numerous improvements made to the intersection since 2019.

But those who work near the intersection and cross it told Newsday that crashes continue to occur regularly there.

Carmen Mohan, a manager at Straight Tax on Sunrise Highway, said that in her 11 years working there, she has grown used to scenes of flashing lights and piercing sirens.

One of the problems with the intersection, she said, is that motorists making a right turn from Straight Path onto eastbound Sunrise can turn on red at the same time drivers on westbound Sunrise can make a U-turn at the intersection, leading to collisions.

“They should definitely stop letting people do a U-turn there,” she said.

Pedestrians also said it is a dangerous crossing. With only one timed crosswalk, spanning Sunrise, those looking to walk across Straight Path have to hustle with the flow of traffic on Sunrise and hope they don’t get hit by vehicles making turns, they said.

“People are afraid to cross,” Mohan said. “Even staff, they’ll never cross. They will get in their car and go around just to get to Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Canzoneri said in an email that the DOT did a traffic study of the intersection last year and will be installing a new pedestrian crossing signal and new sidewalk ramps. The work should be completed this year, he said. 

Canzoneri said the agency has made numerous safety improvements to the intersection. New fencing and guiderails were installed in the median in 2017 as part of a project that extended down Sunrise Highway. The fencing, he wrote, is “designed to prevent pedestrians from crossing the road midblock, compelling them to use the crosswalks.” The project cost $2.5 million, he said.

Also, the DOT last year added a dedicated right-turn lane and painted a thick white line in the road known as a STOP bar “to improve visibility of the pedestrian signal."

The pedestrian crossing also was upgraded with new activating buttons, countdown timers and audible notifications, Canzoneri wrote, with the crosswalk and lane markings repainted to increase reflectivity. The work cost $80,000, he said.

Copiague PTA vice president Mary Sotomayor has been fighting for more safety measures near the intersection of Sunrise Highway and 35th Street since a 15-year-old student, Amir Porterfield, and two other pedestrians were separately struck and killed there within an 11-month period that spanned from December 2022 to November 2023. 

The intersection is about a quarter-mile west of Sunrise and Straight Path, but Sotomayor said the two intersections “marry each other,” and improvements could benefit pedestrians at both spots. She asked the DOT to study the area, and among other suggestions, build an elevated walkway over Sunrise.

“I think [the intersections] are so close that it would make a difference,” she said.

Copiague Fire Chief Danny Broyles, whose department handles calls at the 35th Street intersection, agreed. A pedestrian bridge at 35th Street could “entice” pedestrians to cross there instead of at Straight Path, he said.

“Crossing there is like you’re playing Frogger,” he said.

In a letter to Sotomayor last summer, DOT regional traffic engineer M.T. Vijayendran said its investigation determined a pedestrian bridge was “not warranted.”

Such bridges are helpful, the agency wrote. But, even with an existing bridge in place, pedestrians tend to prefer at-grade crossings — those at ground level.

At existing bridges that have an at-grade crossing option, “the majority of pedestrians choose the at-grade crossing over the raised structure," the agency said.

Donnie Coolbaugh said his younger brother was about to retire as a driver for P.C. Richard & Son. He was a “good person” who was “just trying to make a better life for himself,” he said. “And then this happened.”