What Happened
A crash shut all lanes of Rockaway Turnpike in both directions in North Lawrence on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, according to a Nassau County Police Department traffic advisory. The closure ran the full block between Peninsula Boulevard and Brookville Boulevard.
Nassau County Police issued the advisory directing motorists to seek alternate routes. The department did not specify the number of vehicles involved, the type of collision, or the direction either vehicle was traveling at the time of the crash.
No injuries were confirmed in the advisory. No vehicle descriptions, driver names, or cause of the crash were released.
Location & Road Context
Rockaway Turnpike is a north-south commercial artery in southwestern Nassau County, running through the Five Towns communities including Lawrence, Inwood, and Woodmere before crossing into Queens. The block between Peninsula Boulevard and Brookville Boulevard in North Lawrence sits near a dense mix of retail, residential side streets, and cross-traffic from the adjacent Far Rockaway corridor.
A full two-direction closure on that stretch cuts off a common local route between the South Shore communities and the Queens border. Drivers can check current conditions on longislandtraffic.com/roads/ for updates as the closure evolves.
Nassau County has 1,074 recorded accidents in the Long Island Traffic incident database. A moderate crash on the Southern State Parkway was recorded in Nassau County two days earlier, on August 17, 2026.