In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the Village of Hempstead $586,018 in federal Safe Streets and Roads for All funding — money intended to help the village build a comprehensive plan for reducing fatalities on some of Long Island’s deadliest streets. The grant arrived after a year in which Nassau County recorded at least 28 pedestrian deaths and Suffolk County recorded 33 pedestrian fatalities, while New York City, just across the border, posted its lowest pedestrian death total on record.

That contrast captures the state of pedestrian safety on Long Island right now. The infrastructure problem is well-documented. The legal framework for someone struck by a vehicle runs through New York’s no-fault insurance system and the “serious injury” threshold. And the gap between what New York City has been authorized to do and what Nassau and Suffolk can do continues to widen.

Where Pedestrian Safety on Long Island Stands

State and federal data tell a consistent story. According to figures released by the New York DMV in December 2025, total traffic fatalities on Long Island rose from 103 to 110 year-over-year, with pedestrian deaths climbing from 32 to 35. Preliminary 2025 Nassau County data, as reported by Newsday, put the county’s pedestrian deaths at 28 — up from 26 in 2024. Through March 12, 2026, Nassau police had logged five pedestrian fatalities, projecting to roughly 26 deaths for the full year at that pace.

Suffolk County’s numbers come from the New York State crash dashboards maintained by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee. Between October 2024 and September 2025, 642 pedestrians were involved in crashes in Suffolk, resulting in 573 injuries and 33 fatalities.

The decade-long picture is sobering. In a March 2025 letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Rep. Laura Gillen wrote that 2,100 people had been killed in traffic accidents on Long Island over the past 10 years. New York City, by comparison, has been moving in the opposite direction. NYC recorded 205 total traffic deaths in 2025 — the fewest since record-keeping began in 1910 — and 112 pedestrian deaths, also a record low.

The Roads Producing the Fatalities

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s 2025 analysis identified the five deadliest Nassau County roads for pedestrians: Hempstead Turnpike, Sunrise Highway, Jericho Turnpike, Merrick Road, and Northern Boulevard. The common thread is highway-grade arterials running through dense residential and commercial neighborhoods — roads designed for speed but carrying people on foot.

Hempstead Turnpike (Route 24) has carried the worst reputation for years. The road runs 16 miles across Nassau County, six lanes wide for most of its length, with posted limits typically between 30 and 40 mph and observed off-peak speeds well above that. It cuts through Elmont, Franklin Square, Hempstead, East Meadow, Levittown, and Farmingdale, producing a steady stream of pedestrian crashes. At the July 2025 press conference where Rep. Gillen announced her support for Hempstead’s federal application, she cited one intersection — North Franklin Street and Jackson Street in the Village of Hempstead — that had logged 183 crashes, including two fatal crashes and 12 serious-injury crashes, between 2014 and 2023.

Hempstead Village alone has recorded 51 preventable traffic fatalities between 2018 and 2022, according to figures Rep. Gillen presented at the same press conference.

Federal Money Begins to Arrive on Long Island

The Hempstead grant is part of a broader federal effort. USDOT’s FY25 Safe Streets and Roads for All round awarded $982 million to 521 communities nationwide. The money is structured to fund planning (“Action Plans”), demonstration projects, and physical implementation work — anything from intersection redesigns and high-visibility crosswalk markings to leading pedestrian signals and traffic-calming measures.

Rep. Gillen, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also introduced H.R. 3440 — the Bipartisan Traffic Safety Enhancement Act — in July 2025. The bill is currently pending in Congress.

Why Long Island Lags New York City on Speed Authority

One reason NYC’s pedestrian numbers have fallen so sharply is that the city now has tools Long Island does not. Sammy’s Law, signed in 2024 and named for 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, who was killed by a speeding driver in Brooklyn in 2013, gives New York City the authority to set 20 mph speed limits on individual streets and 10 mph limits on streets redesigned for shared use. In March 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced an expansion to 15 mph school zones across roughly 1,300 school locations by the end of the year, with a stated goal of covering all 2,300 eligible schools by the end of his first term.

That authority does not extend to Nassau or Suffolk County. Speed limits on Long Island roads are set by the New York State Department of Transportation for state-controlled roads and by counties and municipalities for local streets, subject to engineering studies — a slower and more constrained process than the citywide authority NYC obtained through Sammy’s Law. No equivalent legislation for Long Island has advanced in Albany this session.

How a Pedestrian Claim Works Under New York Law

For someone struck by a vehicle in New York, the legal architecture starts with no-fault insurance. Under Insurance Law § 5102, a pedestrian struck by a motor vehicle qualifies as a “covered person” entitled to first-party benefits — typically up to $50,000 in basic medical expenses and lost wages — through the no-fault policy of the vehicle that struck them. These benefits are paid regardless of fault. If the striking vehicle cannot be identified or was uninsured, benefits may instead be available through the pedestrian’s own household auto policy or, if none exists, through the Motor Vehicle Accident Indemnification Corporation (MVAIC).

What no-fault does not pay is pain-and-suffering damages. To recover non-economic damages — the largest component of most serious-injury cases — an injured pedestrian must satisfy the “serious injury” threshold defined in Insurance Law § 5102(d). The statute lists nine categories that qualify, including death, dismemberment, significant disfigurement, fracture, loss of a fetus, permanent loss of use of a body organ or member, permanent consequential limitation of use of a body organ or member, significant limitation of use of a body function or system, and the so-called “90/180” category — a medically determined non-permanent injury that prevents the injured person from performing substantially all material acts of usual daily activity for at least 90 of the 180 days immediately following the accident.

Most pedestrian-versus-vehicle cases involve injuries that satisfy this threshold without much difficulty. Fractures, traumatic brain injuries, internal injuries, and crush injuries are common when an unprotected person is hit by a vehicle. But the threshold remains the gateway under Insurance Law § 5104(a), and meeting it requires objective medical proof tied to the right statutory category. Cases are routinely won or lost on this issue alone.

Common Pedestrian Accident Claims on Long Island

Pedestrians injured by a motor vehicle on Long Island generally have two parallel paths: a no-fault claim for medical bills and lost wages against the responsible vehicle’s insurer, and — if injuries cross the serious-injury threshold — a third-party negligence claim against the driver. Where a pedestrian is killed, the deceased’s estate may have a claim under New York’s wrongful death statute.

Fact patterns that frequently produce strong claims include:

• Crashes at unmarked, faded, or poorly signalized crosswalks on arterial roads
• Turning-vehicle crashes where the driver failed to yield to a pedestrian with the right of way
• Hit-and-run incidents where the driver is later identified, or where MVAIC or uninsured-motorist coverage may apply
• Crashes at intersections with documented prior crash history that put the responsible municipality or state agency on notice
• Crashes involving commercial vehicles, where additional layers of insurance and corporate liability may apply

No-fault claims also carry early procedural deadlines that begin running immediately after the crash — including a written-notice requirement to the insurer that has no flexibility in most circumstances. The longer the gap between the crash and consulting an attorney, the harder it becomes to preserve evidence, identify witnesses, and protect no-fault benefits.

What Comes Next

The federal SS4A program is structured as a multi-year buildout. Hempstead’s planning grant is a first step that, once a Safety Action Plan is completed, can position the village to compete for larger implementation grants for physical infrastructure changes. Other Long Island municipalities have begun pursuing their own SS4A applications.

In Washington, H.R. 3440 will need to clear the committee process. In Albany, no Long Island-specific version of Sammy’s Law has advanced this session. The State DOT continues to handle speed-limit changes on state roads through its engineering-study process.

For now, the practical baseline for Long Island pedestrians has not changed. The same corridors that produced last year’s fatalities remain in use, the same intersections continue to see crashes, and the no-fault and serious-injury threshold framework that governs every claim remains exactly as it was.

Speak With a New York Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

If you or a loved one was injured or killed in a pedestrian crash on Long Island, the attorneys at the Law Offices of Rudolph F.X. Migliore, P.C. can evaluate your potential claim at no cost. We handle pedestrian injury claims throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties and can help you understand how the no-fault system and the serious injury threshold apply to your situation and what records will be needed to move forward.

Call our Commack office at 631-543-3663 for a free, confidential case evaluation, or use our online contact form. There is no fee unless we recover compensation for you.

This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Each case depends on its specific facts, including the timing of any claim, the nature of the injuries, and the conduct of every party involved. No outcome can be guaranteed in any litigation.