The Long Island Death Trap
The Southern State Parkway is a death trap...this comes as no surprise to those most familiar with it...it's commuters (or former commuters)
The road itself is problem enough, winding and curving through densely populated Nassau County and Western Suffolk County...it's only exacerbated by the speed demons who take to it when the sun sets on the weekends.
I drove the Southern State between Exit 19 and the Queens border everyday for five years to commute to college. As a freshman and a new driver, the road scared me enough that if I drove after dark, I used the safer, more navigable Northern State Parkway. I used it fairly often to go to and from social events on the island. I never really thought of it as a death trap for myself, but I rarely drove in speeds exceeding 65 mph, especially at night and I was very aware of the people around me and of the turns and sudden changes in the road coming up.
I did, however, notice other cars around me flying past me at 80-85 mph, drivers who would realize the road curves at an alarming rate a split second before disaster and swerved into other lanes. I have witness more near accidents on the Southern State to even count.
It doesn't surprise me that it has become The Long Island Death Trap.
Long Island itself has a problem with young, inexperienced, cocky drivers. Just last weekend my car was damn near totaled by a new driver in an SUV down in Oceanside, New York, a hamlet in Southern Nassau County about six miles east of the Queens border and two miles north of the Atlantic Ocean. I have been in five accidents (three of them fender benders,) in the past seven years, four of the five have been in Nassau County...luckily none on the Southern State.
*knocking on wood*
No comments:
Post a Comment