Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A violent single-vehicle crash on County Road 39 just west of Shrubland Road in western Southampton left two people seriously injured and triggered hours of gridlock across the western end of the town late Tuesday afternoon and into the night, according to WLIW-FM’s The Long Island Daily. The crash occurred shortly before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, and the ripple effects on traffic were still being felt nearly five hours later.
Michael Wright, reporting on 27east.com as cited by WLIW-FM, noted that conditions along the Montauk Highway and County Road 39 corridor had actually been unusually manageable for a Tuesday afternoon. Southampton Town officials had stationed police officers at traffic lights along the corridor, allowing commuter traffic to bypass the normal red-green signal cycle and keep vehicles moving more efficiently than usual — a measure likely put in place in connection with the 126th U.S. Open Golf Championship underway at nearby Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. That relative order came to an abrupt end when the crash was reported.
Southampton Town officials confirmed the crash was a single-vehicle incident. Passersby who observed the scene reported that the vehicle was heavily damaged. One of the two occupants was trapped inside the wreckage and could not exit on their own. Southampton Fire Department heavy rescue crews responded and used the “Jaws of Life” extrication equipment to cut the trapped person free from the vehicle — a procedure that underscores the severity of the impact.
The more critically injured of the two occupants was then transported to Southampton Village, where a Suffolk County Police Department medevac helicopter had been positioned and was standing by. That person was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital at approximately 6 p.m. The second person involved in the crash sustained injuries described as non-life-threatening and was taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment.
County Road 39 was shut down at the crash scene for more than an hour while emergency and cleanup crews worked the scene. By approximately 7:30 p.m., the roadway had been reopened to traffic. However, the damage to the evening commute was far from over. Westbound traffic between Water Mill and Shinnecock Hills continued to crawl at a near standstill until nearly 10 o’clock Tuesday night — a stretch of hours that left drivers across western Southampton and Southampton Village enduring significant delays well into the evening.
This crash is the latest in a cluster of serious traffic incidents along the County Road 39 and Montauk Highway corridor during the week of the U.S. Open. Long Island Traffic previously reported on a serious accident causing significant delays around the U.S. Open in Shinnecock on Tuesday evening and a separate car crash near Shinnecock that caused major delays Tuesday night at the 2026 U.S. Open, suggesting that the combination of tournament traffic, elevated road use, and limited corridor capacity is creating serious hazard conditions along this stretch of Long Island’s South Fork.
Location & Road Context
County Road 39 is one of the primary east-west arterials serving the Town of Southampton and the Hamptons, running roughly parallel to Montauk Highway (NY-27) and serving as a key commuter and commercial corridor linking communities from Southampton Village eastward. The stretch west of Shrubland Road lies within a segment that funnels significant traffic between Water Mill and Shinnecock Hills — a bottleneck under normal conditions that becomes acute during the summer season and during major events like the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. For more on traffic conditions along this corridor, see our roads coverage for County Road 39 and Southampton Town traffic updates.
The Water Mill to Shinnecock Hills segment, where westbound traffic crawled until nearly 10 p.m., is a well-known pressure point on the South Fork’s limited road network. With few alternate routes of comparable capacity, any closure or major slowdown on CR-39 rapidly backs up into Southampton Village and the surrounding area, as Tuesday’s events starkly demonstrated.
Broader Impact
The timing of this crash — during a week in which the 126th U.S. Open Golf Championship is drawing massive crowds and national media attention to the Shinnecock Hills area — magnified its traffic impact significantly. The Golf Channel and NBC are broadcasting from the region, and as WLIW-FM noted, the event has put the extreme wealth and heavy road use of the South Fork squarely in the national spotlight. The added tournament traffic loading onto an already-strained corridor like County Road 39 means that even a single serious incident can cascade into hours-long gridlock with very limited ability for drivers to reroute. Drivers traveling to or from the South Fork during the remainder of U.S. Open week should anticipate continued elevated delays along the CR-39 and Montauk Highway corridor, particularly during evening commute hours, and should consult Long Island Traffic’s accidents page for real-time updates.