A Maryland county's road safety lessons for Long Island

The recent Dangerous Roads news story about what a D.C. suburb was able to accomplish in reducing crashes and resulting injuries and fatalities offers some hope for Long Island.

What struck me was the common theme of speed. In Montgomery County, as in Nassau and Suffolk counties, cars rule the road and getting from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible is drivers' top priority. While not the only factor in crashes, speed in many cases is the culprit. So, officials in Montgomery County took action to slow drivers down. Simple interventions like adjusting the timing of pedestrian signals, painting brighter crosswalks and installing flexible posts to extend curbs are inexpensive ways to slow cars. We've instituted some of these measures here on Long Island, but they're not enough.

Why? Part of it is funding, part of it is resistance by drivers being forced to drive slower, and part of it derives from the hodgepodge of municipalities and layers of government here, from villages to towns, counties and the state. Hindered by their own rules and regulations, they get in each other's way and road safety progress is often thwarted. One part of a road placed on a "diet" by narrowing the lanes gives way just a few miles later to an expansive roadway that opens up to multiple lanes, allowing drivers to speed up once again.

Certainly, funding is a perennial challenge. Montgomery County was boosted in its changes with $8.3 million in competitive traffic safety grants it received from the bipartisan infrastructure legislation signed by President Joe Biden in 2021. Roadway redesign is extremely expensive — and there's so much ground to cover on Long Island, with its open roads built over decades. 

The research tells us that narrower lanes cause drivers to slow down. It’s a psychological response to the more constricted space. A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study found that narrower lanes lower speeds, with 9- to 11-foot-wide lanes showing lower accident frequencies.

Officials in Montgomery County expressed a deep commitment and willingness to see their traffic safety plans through. Although the goal of hitting "Vision Zero" is not yet a reality, the reduction in deaths and injuries their data show provides incentive to keep pushing for more road redesign, cooperation among levels of government, and a commitment to educating the public about the dangers of speed.

Similarly, Long Island has made strides in its efforts to slow down drivers through road diets, installing speed bumps, daylighting curbs — flexible stanchions that extend a corner — and making improvements in signal light timing. Baldwin put one of its main roads on a diet. The town reduced parts of Grand Avenue from four lanes to two, with a center-left turn lane.

While these changes and more drastic redesign efforts take a long time and lots of money, the education piece about the dangers of speedy driving happens in real time.

With our Walk Safe Long Island campaign, the New York Coalition for Transportation Safety and allied organizations travel Long Island's roads to bring safety education to students at schools, adults attending programs at libraries, lawmakers and more. There are so many state laws on the books meant to keep drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists safe. Getting everyone to learn them — and changing some mindsets to prioritize safety over speed — is one way we can improve our dangerous roads while we wait for more permanent fixes to take hold.

This guest essay reflects the views of Cynthia Brown, executive director of the New York Coalition for Transportation Safety.