Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. By the way, one little addendum to our last segment when I was resetting which local members from swing districts voted for or against Jim Jordan, I neglected to mention that George Santos from the North Shore of Nassau County and a little bit of Northeast Queens did vote for Jim Jordan. I guess the best approach to George Santos, no matter what party you're in these days, might be to ignore him, but that was not my intention. I left out George Santos. Yes, Santos. Whether this adds to your reasons to vote him out of office or not, he did vote for Jim Jordan for speaker this week.

Meanwhile, Long Island's roads are increasingly lethal. Last year, traffic fatalities on the island surged to their highest level since 2015, claiming 243 lives. That's 29% more traffic deaths than there were in 2019. Suffolk County saw a 42% increase in fatal crashes last year compared with 2019. We talked so much about Vision Zero in New York City and all those traffic crash statistics. It's a big deal on Long Island too, and it doesn't get that much coverage. The figures I just cited were reported to Newsday, which has done some excellent reporting on the dramatic surge in traffic deaths on the island.

Newsday also reports that traffic enforcement lags. As the roads get deadlier for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists as well, police made fewer DWI arrests and issued fewer summonses in 2022 than they did back in 2019, the year we're using as a comparison point. We'll talk now about what's causing this increase in traffic fatalities, why enforcement has not kept pace, and how to bring some of these numbers down. One interesting question for me is, do the approaches to what we might call Vision Zero differ in suburban areas than from New York City? Joining us are two Newsday reporters who've been on this beat, Arielle Martinez and Lorena Mongelli. Arielle, Lorena, welcome to WNYC. Glad to have you with us.

Lorena Mongelli: Thanks for having us.

Arielle Martinez: Glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open. Long Island drivers, Long Island pedestrians, Long Island cyclists, help us report this story on what you're seeing, any close encounters of your own, or maybe we've even been hit or lost somebody and what you would like to see done about it. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Arielle, do you want to run us through any of the numbers in addition to what I gave or is that basically it, and now we should start talking about why?

Arielle Martinez: As you said, 243 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes last year in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and that's the highest that we've seen since 2015. It has been rising since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Honestly, when I first saw that the fatalities were rising, I was a little skeptical.

Brian Lehrer: Oops, did we lose Arielle's line? You dropped out there for a minute. You were starting to say when you first saw these numbers, you were a little skeptical. Pick it up from there.

Arielle Martinez: Yes. Hello. Yes. I thought perhaps this is the consequence of traffic levels rebounding after an initial drop due to the initial shutdowns due to the pandemic, but what the data shows is that not only did the number of fatalities increase, but the fatality rate based on traffic levels in terms of vehicle miles traveled, also increased. Basically, what this means is that the rise in fatalities outpaced the rise in traffic levels. This isn't just about more cars returning to the roads after the shutdowns.

Brian Lehrer: Lorena, you want to pick it up from there and say what your reporting indicates it is about?

Lorena Mongelli: One of the things Arielle looked at that we were curious about is what type of contributing factors are leading to this increase. The data showed that some of these reckless driving behaviors that experts call unsafe speed, improper lane changes in passing as well as distracted driving, and alcohol use are increasingly being cited as factors in fatal car crashes.

Brian Lehrer: 65 fatal collisions last year, up from 44 in 2019. Long Island Police linking this to unsafe speed as the leading contributing factor. As you report, police also reported an increase in alcohol-involved fatal crashes from 14 to 21 last year. Arielle, what's that about? Anecdotally, a lot of people say people are driving crazier than they did before the pandemic. That's not a statistic-based analysis, [laughs] but do the police say that?

Arielle Martinez: Yes. These numbers are coming directly from the accident reports that police fill out for each crash that are sent to a stage database. As we said, they are increasingly reporting in fatal crashes factors like speed and distracted driving and lane changing and passes. As we said, enforcement levels are also down. This is also data that is reported to the state. All together Long Island Police Department issued 18% fewer speeding tickets last year compared to 2019, 24% fewer adult DWIRS.

Brian Lehrer: What's that about, Lorena? Why if driving is getting weirder and fatalities are going up, does there appear to be less enforcement?

Lorena Mongelli: There's several municipalities out there that have their own police departments, but we did ask the two main ones out on Long Island, Nassau Police Department, and the commissioner there did acknowledge, and they both acknowledged also the commissioner in Suffolk County, they both acknowledged that there has been a decline in enforcement. Part of it has to do with just less traffic on the roads. The commissioner in Nassau County did also acknowledge that yes, now it's time to re-motivate a lot of these officers because during the pandemic they were on other jobs, and they were also focused on other things, and now it's time to get back into it. Suffolk County also said they're amping up enforcement, but they didn't actually explain why it went down other than to say that the traffic was down.

Brian Lehrer: I see a few people are calling in who are activists in this area, and who are even cited in your reporting. Let me take one of them right now. This is Elissa Kyle. Those of you who are in New York City and don't follow Long Island news very much, we call it Vision Zero in New York City, the group that I believe Elissa Kyle belongs to is called Vision Long Island. Elissa, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Elissa Kyle: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: What would you like to add?

Elissa Kyle: We've been focused a lot on-- Enforcement is definitely one part of the equation, but no matter how many police officers there are, you can't have a cop on every corner of every street all the time. We are trying to get more of is roads that are essentially self-enforcing. Many of our roads were designed 50, 70 years ago for high speed and many of them allow lots of speed and reckless driving. Then we might post a sign up there that says, "Please be careful," but what we need to do is re-engineer our roads so that the easiest thing to do is the right thing, and that if you're speeding, you should feel like you're speeding. It shouldn't feel comfortable to speed in areas where there's people walking, people biking, places where people live and have places to go. It's just the roads need to be designed in a way to really factor in all the people who are using them.

Brian Lehrer: Road design is an issue. Do you think that's different in the suburbs than in the city, the solutions?

Elissa Kyle: To some extent. There's no one-size-fits-all all. What may be an appropriate solution in Western Nassau County might not work in Eastern Suffolk County. The general concept is to help slow drivers down, to make the road feel like you should be driving more slowly. The actual techniques used might differ depending on what the surrounding context is, if it's more rural context or more urban type context.

Brian Lehrer: Alyssa, thank you very much for calling in. I'm going to go to somebody else who was cited in the Newsday reporting on the increase in traffic deaths on Long Island. This is Matt Carmody currently in Manhattan, but I see with an office on Long Island. Matt, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Matt Carmody: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me on. I'm with the company AKRF. Lorena interviewed me after we met at a conference called Walk Bike Long Island, which was a safety conference to bring attention to this problem. While talking with Lorena, one of the things that I identified was that there are low-cost engineering solutions.

I am a transportation engineer, and my clients often ask for what can be done at short-term and low cost. As Alyssa Kyle was saying there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, in the suburbs, a couple of solutions that are low cost that have been effective have been removing parking to increase the sight lines at intersections between pedestrians and motorists, as well as motorists on one street to another.

Transportation engineers call that daylighting so that you can see each other better. Then, another one is, we're so distracted these days as drivers. Something that brings attention to us is if we run over rumble strips, that brings our attention that we're coming up on an intersection or a crosswalk and we need to look up from our phones.

Brian Lehrer: Kachunk, kachunk, kachunk.

Matt Carmody: I just wanted to add that there are-- Everybody, you can't ignore a rumble strip. There are low-cost, easy implementable solutions that are in the toolbox of improvements.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, thank you very much for that. Lorena, I see that one source told you that distracted driving is probably the biggest problem. Cell phones are obviously ubiquitous enough, but so many new cars have enormous dashboard screens, basically tablets right on the dash. How much is distracted driving a factor in this rise in the number of traffic deaths as far as you've been able to tell in your reporting?

Lorena Mongelli: Arielle, can you take that one since you broke the data down?

Arielle Martinez: Yes, sure. Police reported distracted driving as a contributing factor in fatal crashes 21 times in 2022. That's up from 12 in 2019. The numbers do indicate that distracted driving is becoming more of a problem.

Brian Lehrer: What about-- Another listener is pointing out, Arielle, I don't know if your reporting indicated this at all, but that the newer cars just accelerate so smoothly. You could be going 80 and it feels like you're going 40. Has anybody else brought that up?

Lorena Mongelli: No, that's not something that was raised at all actually.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, because I think probably cars have been like that for a long time. Lisa in Cutchogue on the North Fork, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi, Brian. Long-time listener, second-time caller. I'm a road cyclist. That means I ride what looks like a 10-speed bike, but it's got more speeds than that. I've been doing it for decades. I used to live in Huntington, so I rode a lot in Nassau. Then, a year ago, we moved out to Cutchogue. I can attest to the difference in driver behavior and also just how safe it is out here to ride a road bike versus Nassau County.

Nassau, we used to feel like we were moving targets for cars because it's just so much more congestion, even though it's just a smaller county, but more folks living there, density. There's that. Then, the part about cars being faster today, I can attest to that too. I used to drive a Prius and it was like driving a golf cart.

Now, I'm in an EV that's an SUV, and I find myself on the highway going too fast and not realizing it like, "Oh, my God. Look how fast I'm going." I have to think about that because I'm also a cyclist. Being a cyclist, a lot of motorists don't realize, when you're a cyclist, you have the same rights as a pedestrian. There's a group on Long Island, well, it's actually a New York State group called New York Bicycling Coalition that's doing a lot of advocacy work on Long Island for safer cycling, but also for safer pedestrian.

I think it's like what Vision New York is doing or Transportation Alternatives is doing in New York City or in the [unintelligible 00:15:33]. NYBC, the Bicycling Coalition is doing it out on Long Island and other parts of New York State. It's definitely an issue. Your statistic, the 29% higher is shocking. I don't like hearing that.

About a month ago, I was riding in Southold and a motorist in the morning cut me off, and I ended up ramming about 20 miles an hour into the back of her car. She was shocked. She said, "I didn't even saw you." Then, she said, "I didn't know where you came from." I was in the line of traffic. She just never looked, but she had the right attitude. She didn't say, "Why were you there?" She said, "Can I take you to the hospital?" That was actually a good outcome of a bad situation.

Brian Lehrer: At least people can still sometimes treat each other like fellow human beings, right? Lisa, thank you for that. Interesting that you backed up that theory that some new cars these days make it feel like you're not going as fast as you're actually going. That was interesting. We're going to take a call from someone we know, Mary Beth on the Upper West Side, who's been on the show before and has long been an activist in this area. She lost her husband a number of years ago who was hit by a car while on his bicycle. Mary Beth, hi. Thank you for calling in on this. You're in Manhattan. I was trying to basically take calls from Long Island on this one, but I see you're calling with a really interesting point about Vision Zero actually being developed in the suburbs.

Mary Beth: That's true. Brian, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you, Mary Beth.

Mary Beth: Okay, great. Thank you so much for taking my call. I visited Sweden. I actually got a tour with Claes Tingvall, who was the person who coined the phrase 'Vision Zero'. It started in greater Sweden, the suburbs, and the countryside before it was brought to Stockholm so it's totally appropriate for Long Island. As one of your callers pointed out, you have engineers who will back this up.

It's mostly about infrastructure because even if there's distracted driving, even if there's speeding, people doing reckless things, when the infrastructure supports a calming of traffic and ways in which you have to pay attention and you are giving the right of way to pedestrians like the things that we do at crosswalks here, it's the same thing in the city and creating roundabouts rather than intersections.

There are so many aspects of Vision Zero that are totally appropriate for the suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs, so I know them well. I will say that for anyone who's listening, we now, Families for Safe Streets, which is all made up of people who have lost a loved one or have been severely injured, we have 20 chapters now growing across the country, and many of them are not in cities because this is a nationwide, really a global-wide problem.

It only gets worse if we don't take the engineering really seriously. A lot of the changes, as you can see in New York City, are not hugely expensive. We're talking about paint and bollards and bump outs and timed crossings and things that pretty much any department of transportation can carry out without a lot of cost.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I can give an example from my own neighborhood where I walk a lot, Marble Hill, Kingsbridge, Riverdale. There are some very complicated intersections along Broadway there. I've seen over the years the DOT put in more complicated traffic light, what's the right word, cycles, and particular parts of the cycle where only pedestrians can cross for a little while or where cars can only make right turns for a little while, that kind of thing, and doesn't look like it was expensive to do. It makes those intersections feel much safer for me as a pedestrian.

Mary Beth: Totally. It's like congest to a little-- Shout out to anyone who needs support or resources or would like to get involved in advocacy who have lost someone or have been severely injured. Google us Families for Safe Streets and join the movement.

Brian Lehrer: Mary Beth, thank you very much. Before you go, Lorena, is there a tidy explanation about why enforcement hasn't kept pace with the rise in traffic crashes and traffic fatalities on Long Island?

Lorena Mongelli: No. Wish we had those answers. The most we have is from the commissioner, the Nassau Suffolk police commissioner Patrick Ryder telling us and acknowledging that during the pandemic, they were focused on some other issues, the [unintelligible 00:21:07], and also during the pandemic, the virus itself. Enforcement declined because of that. We don't really have any tidy answers, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: Lorena Mongelli and data reporter Arielle Martinez from Newsday, on the increase in the number of traffic crashes, traffic injuries, traffic deaths on Long Island. Thanks so much for joining us.

Lorena Mongelli: Thank you.

Arielle Martinez: Thank you.

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