In the July 14 issue of the Great Neck News, Jessica Chin wrote an interesting article calling for more pedestrian safety measures on Long Island.
She recounted the tragedy of Oren Bennaeim, who was struck down and killed last year at the intersection of Middle Neck and Barstow roads in the Village of Great Neck Plaza.
In August 2011, I was also struck by a car at the intersection of Middle Neck and Cutter Mill Roads in Great Neck Plaza.
I was lucky.
I ended up in the emergency room and eventually recovered.
The one who got hit the week before wasn’t so lucky; she ended up at Nassau North.
During this time, I was also a member of the Village of Great Neck Plaza Pedestrian Safety Committee, headed by Mayor Jean Celender.
A short time before my accident, the committee had identified the locations in the Plaza that were most hazardous to pedestrians.
Accompanied by the mayor, the committee took a walking tour of the village to assess what measures should be taken to address the most severe problems before more people were killed.
After I had recovered sufficiently, I brought photos of my accident to the next meeting of the Pedestrian Safety Committee to graphically point out what the lack of pedestrian safety really looked like.
I asked Jean Celender what she was going to do about it.
I was told that the issues were Nassau County’s problem — not the Village’s.
No further action was taken by the mayor; there were no subsequent committee meetings; the committee died along with the victims who didn’t survive.
Fast forward from 2011 to 2017. Gov. Cuomo announced a plan to provide $110 million to improve pedestrian safety throughout Long Island and upstate New York. Nassau County Legislator Ellen Birnbaum took up the challenge of overseeing efforts to improve pedestrian safety on Middle Neck Road.
And lo and behold! A new Pedestrian Safety Committee suddenly appeared in the village and Jean Celender’s photo appeared in the paper!
If Jean Celender had acted on the recommendations of the 2011 Pedestrian Safety Committee, Oren Bennaeim might have been alive today.
Instead, Celender spent her time acquiring huge grants, such as the current one to improve the Welwyn Road area, including building an unwanted and unneeded park and bricking up the sidewalks (which is a safety hazard in itself).
But that’s another story.
While she was playing Iron Chef at The Atria last week, our illustrious mayor should have cooked up some grant money to implement solutions to urgent safety problems.
Leo Pfeifer
Village of Neck Plaza
(We want our “Great” back!)
