Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Ana Marte, 67, said that a fatal car accident on the Southern State Parkway in January changed her life.
Her grandson Anthonie Marte, 23, was severely injured in a one-car crash shortly after 11 p.m. on Jan. 12, in the eastbound lanes not far from Exit 30, near Farmingdale and Massapequa, according to the New York State Police.
Investigators said that the car in which Marte was a passenger, a black 2016 Dodge Dart, was traveling at a high rate of speed and weaving between lanes before the driver lost control and crashed into a tree.
Two rear-seat passengers, ages 23 and 21, were pronounced dead at the scene. The driver, Jaden Dsouza, 19, of College Point, Queens, and Marte, of East Elmhurst, Queens, who was in the front passenger seat, were both extricated from the vehicle and transported to a nearby hospital in serious condition.
Marte’s grandmother said he suffered major head injuries, and she still takes care of him daily, feeding him and giving him pain medicine. He is slowly recovering, with doctors’ appointments and physical therapy. “He’s like a baby again,” she said. “He doesn’t want to go outside because he’s scared, and all he does is sleep.”
Marte does not remember the accident, his grandmother said.
Dsouza was later charged with one count of driving while ability impaired by drugs, second-degree manslaughter, first-degree vehicular manslaughter, second-degree assault and aggravated vehicular homicide, police said.
“It’s on the driver for the most part,” State Police Capt. Mike Rhodes said. “If they’re inattentive, if they’re speeding, if they’re not following the vehicle and traffic law, they do not understand the severity of what could happen.”
Rhodes oversees 56 state troopers and eight sergeants, many of whom patrol the 25.3-mile long Southern State. Most accidents, he said, occur during peak congestion, at around 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Crash data from the state police show a fluctuating but persistent pattern of accidents on the parkway over the past six years, with fatal crashes increasing in 2024.
In 2019, there were 3,127 total crashes on the Nassau County stretch of the parkway, including six fatalities. That number dropped to 2,331 in 2020, but rose again in subsequent years, reaching 2,716 in 2022 and 2,725 in 2023. In 2024, state police recorded 2,549 crashes and five fatalities. Thus far this year, there have been 328 crashes and one fatality.
Crashes resulting in serious personal injury in Nassau have remained relatively low throughout the period, with no more than two reported in any given year.
While most incidents are non-fatal, serious crashes often involve an added risk: intoxication. Speed and distraction remain consistent contributing factors, but impairment by drugs or alcohol increases the potential for deadly outcomes.
“A lot of these things, they hit every single age category,” Rhodes said.
To combat the persistent problem, state police focus on enforcement and outreach. Not every traffic stop results in a citation; many serve as opportunities for education.
Personal injury attorney Stephen Cohen said that in his more than five decades of handling lawsuits, most of those that involve accidents on the Southern State involve intoxicated drivers.
Cohen, a partner at the law firm Cohen and Jaffe, in New Hyde Park, said that speed, intoxication and reckless driving continue to be the common factors in the region’s most serious accidents.
“I don’t believe road design is an issue at all,” Cohen said. “Posting more signs to slow down isn’t an answer, because when somebody is either speeding or just intoxicated, they don’t really care what the sign says.”
Many collisions during rush hour, he explained, stem from traffic congestion and insufficient braking distance. “People are gliding along, and they hit a certain spot, and all of a sudden they weren’t prepared, because they’re going 70 miles an hour,” Cohen said. “So you see a lot of rear-end collisions, not necessarily death-related.”
Fatal crashes, he noted, often involve younger drivers, high speeds and intoxication or impairment.
“You don’t see fatalities at 11 o’clock in the morning,” Cohen said. “You just don’t. You may see them at 4 in the morning. When your ability to observe is not sharp because of either impairment or intoxication, the car is going to go airborne. And if there happens to be a tree there, that’s the next thing you’re going to hit.”
In his practice, Cohen said, the firm represents victims or passengers, but not intoxicated drivers.
Under state law, he noted, lawsuits require plaintiffs to meet the “serious injury” threshold defined in insurance law. In cases involving fatalities, death, families must petition a Surrogate’s Court to appoint a representative for the estate before filing a lawsuit. That process can take over a year, he said.
Insurance coverage limits often dictate how quickly a case can be resolved. “If somebody has — let’s say, the responsible party — has a $100,000 policy, that case is going to be over in two seconds,” Cohen said.
Efforts to reform wrongful death laws in New York have repeatedly stalled, despite advocacy from legal organizations.
Despite changes in laws and vehicle technology over the years, Cohen said, the root problems remain unchanged.
“It only seems to get worse because cars are faster than they were 20, 30 years ago,” he said. “There’s more people drinking or doing some sort of drugs. And that’s what you see in all horrific accidents.”
-Additional reporting by Mohammad Rafiq.
