What Happened
A 29-year-old West Islip man driving an MTA truck westbound on Route 109 struck an eastbound sedan just before 4 a.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Route 109 and Herzel Boulevard in West Babylon, according to News 12 Long Island. The sedan’s driver, a 31-year-old man from Valley Stream, was attempting a left turn onto Herzel Boulevard when the MTA vehicle hit him. Suffolk County police confirmed no injuries in either vehicle.
News 12 reached out to the MTA for comment and had received no response as of 8:12 a.m. Suffolk County police responded to the scene.
The August 26 crash is the third documented incident at this intersection in four years. On August 7, 2026, less than three weeks earlier, a pickup truck and a sedan collided at the same spot, injuring both drivers, News 12 reported at the time. That August 7 crash prompted residents and business owners to go on record about conditions at the intersection. The intersection was also the site of a fatal crash in 2022.
Residents who spoke to News 12 after the August 7 crash said the blinking yellow left-turn arrow on Route 109 at Herzel confuses drivers, who routinely misjudge the speed and distance of oncoming traffic before turning. “It’s a little bit dangerous over here,” one man on a bicycle told News 12. “Cars try to beat the light when it turns yellow.” Neighbors a few blocks south on Herzel at Wellwood Avenue in North Lindenhurst have also raised separate concerns about increased crashes near that stretch.
A New York State Department of Transportation spokesperson, responding to the August 7 incident earlier this month, told News 12 that safety is the agency’s top priority and that the Route 109/Herzel Boulevard intersection meets all applicable state and federal standards. News 12 filed a fresh request to the DOT on August 26; that response was also pending as of the 8:12 a.m. filing.
Location & Road Context
Route 109 and Herzel Boulevard is a signalized intersection in West Babylon carrying heavy east-west commuter traffic on Route 109, a principal arterial connecting Babylon village to Farmingdale. Herzel Boulevard runs north into the residential grid of North Lindenhurst, where Wellwood Avenue forms a secondary intersection that residents separately flagged for safety problems.
The intersection’s left-turn phase, a blinking yellow arrow permitting a permissive turn across oncoming traffic, has been the focus of community complaints since at least the August 7, 2026 injury crash. A fatal collision at the same spot dates to 2022. West Babylon has seen additional recent crash activity: a person was injured in a separate West Babylon crash on August 24, 2026.
Broader Impact
The New York State DOT’s position, that the intersection meets all state and federal design standards, means any signal retiming, left-turn phase change, or geometric modification would require the agency to initiate its own safety review or respond to a formal municipal request from the Town of Babylon. Residents seeking a signal change have no direct mechanism to compel a redesign; the DOT’s next step, if any, was not announced as of the August 26 report.