Long Island traffic deaths down sharply, serious injuries up in 2024

Traffic deaths fell 24% in Suffolk County between 2023 and 2024, finally returning to pre-pandemic levels, although serious injuries rose in both Nassau and Suffolk, according to newly finalized data from the Institute for Traffic Safety Management and Research in Albany. 

In Nassau, traffic deaths had fallen to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 and remained constant in 2024 at 67 deaths, according to ITSMR.

Suffolk's improvement, from 155 deaths to 118, is a more dramatic version of a national trend, where traffic deaths have been falling after they spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching over 40,000 each year from 2021 to 2023, as emptier roadways encouraged dangerous driving behavior. Deaths fell 17.9% in New York State and 8.2% across the United States during the first six months of 2025, according to early projections from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina told Newsday he believes increased enforcement contributed to the decline in 2024, and that his department’s preliminary numbers show a continued decline in 2025.

"We shifted some of our resources ... and we’ve been able to increase the size of our highway unit by 30% over the last 18 months," he said. "We're always going to be concerned about violent crime, and one violent crime victim is one too many, but everybody is affected by roadway safety."

Nassau police officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Robert Sinclair, a spokesperson for AAA Northeast, said the decline in deaths came after drivers "got into a lot of bad habits during the pandemic," like speeding and aggressive driving.

Suffolk still led the state in traffic deaths in 2024 — 118 people killed, followed by Queens County at 71 — and Sinclair said he was concerned that even as deaths fell, serious injuries in Suffolk rose 10%, from 883 in 2023 to 967 in 2024. In Nassau, serious injuries rose 17%, from 744 to 873.

"Serious injuries include lacerations, broken bones, crushed skulls, burns, unconsciousness" and inability to leave the scene without assistance, he said. "In some instances, some of these injuries are so serious that people might have wished they were dead."

ITSMR's county-level data for 2025 is still unreliable, in part because it can take months to verify deaths, but Newsday keeps a running tally of local traffic fatalities reported in police news releases. While not comprehensive, that list shows 73 deaths in Suffolk and 62 deaths in Nassau so far this year — slightly less than the publicly reported deaths at this point last year for Suffolk, and slightly more for Nassau.

Impaired driving and unrestrained occupant deaths down

The new data suggest that fewer Long Islanders were killed because of drunken or high drivers, or because they weren’t wearing a seat belt.

Across Nassau and Suffolk, the number of people killed in crashes involving a "substance-related driver" fell by more than half from 79 in 2023 to 25 in 2024, compared with a 26% reduction in the rest of the state. Likewise, deaths of unrestrained vehicle occupants fell from 37 to 28 on the Island.

ITSMR defines "substance-related" crashes as involving alcohol, illegal drugs or prescription medication, as recorded in a police crash report, ticket, alcohol test or drug test, though it notes this is different from the legal threshold of "impairment."

Paige Carbone, regional director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she was "hopeful" about the trend, which could be because Generation Z is generally drinking less alcohol than previous generations — though it is more likely to use drugs like cannabis.

She said she hoped MADD’s work on Long Island — including education campaigns and legal support to victims — is having an effect. MADD-New York also advocates for stricter laws that would reduce the blood-alcohol limit from 0.08% to 0.05%, make it easier to prosecute drivers who refuse to take a drug test and require manufacturers to install passive drunken and impaired driving prevention technologies in new vehicles, she said.

"These days, there's no excuse [for drunken driving.] A for-hire vehicle is as far away as your cellphone with Uber and Lyft," said Sinclair, from AAA.

He added that other trends concerned him — like continued high levels of aggressive driving.

"Recently, we published our aggressive driving study, and according to our surveys, 96% of drivers admitted engaging in some form of aggressive driving," he said.

Long Island in context

Traffic deaths are sometimes measured relative to population. Suffolk had a traffic fatality rate of 7.7 per 100,000 residents in 2024, well below the national rate of 11.6 but significantly higher than the statewide rate of 5.5, and the fifth-highest among the New York's 20 most populous counties. In 2023, Suffolk was number one among the 20 most populous counties for traffic deaths per capita. Nassau’s traffic fatality rate was 4.8 in 2024, below the statewide rate.

On average, Suffolk residents drive more each day (about 23.3 miles) than Nassau residents (18.1 miles), or New Yorkers statewide (16.6 miles), according to state transportation department data from 2023.

Relative to population, more Americans die in traffic crashes than residents of any European country, according to the most recent World Health Organization data, for 2021. That year, Americans were more likely to die on the road than people in Rwanda, Sri Lanka or Indonesia, to name just a few of the 114 countries that outperformed the United States.

Newsday's Arielle Martinez contributed to this report.