Another late-night car accident has rattled residents of Hampton Street (Route 114) in Sag Harbor. Early Saturday morning, near a curve in the road at Division Street, an 18-year-old was charged with driving while intoxicated after flipping his car onto another that was parked in its owners' driveway. The incident echoed several other crashes in the same vicinity.
Brodie David Veas of Palm Springs, Fla., southbound in a white 2014 Chevrolet Impala at around 1:30 a.m., left the road, hit a picket fence at 14 Hampton Street, and continued a short way along the sidewalk, where the car struck a tree. It wound up in the driveway of 18 Hampton Street, on top of the car parked there.
Officers arrived to find Mr. Veas and two others, his passengers, standing outside the car. The driver told police he'd had two shots of alcohol before leaving his job at Le Bilboquet, on Long Wharf, and had checked his cellphone while driving, which, he said, caused him to veer off the road.
According to the report, Mr. Veas suffered unspecified injuries that left him unable to perform field sobriety tests. A blood-alcohol test was given, and he was charged with misdemeanor D.W.I. before an ambulance arrived to take him to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for treatment. He was eventually released on his own recognizance, with a date in Sag Harbor Village Justice Court on Friday, Sept. 2, before Justice Lisa R. Rana.
The significantly damaged Impala was towed from the scene, as was the totaled 2017 BMW belonging to Sanna and Michael Feirstein.
Oddly enough, the couple didn't hear the crash. Rather, Ms. Feirstein told The Star, they were awakened by a phone call from a neighbor. "We were completely stunned by the scene that we saw," she said Tuesday. "It was very dark. The car was on top of ours, sort of perpendicular to our car, upside-down. . . . He took out a neighbor's fence completely. It's the third time that happened to her."
The homeowners themselves cleaned up the debris, she said, except for a fuel spill, which the tow truck driver covered with absorbent material.
Similar accidents occurred in April this year, July of 2021, and October of 2020, with the cars hitting a house or a tree. Fed-up residents formed an ad hoc group, the Sag Harbor Traffic Crisis Committee, to lobby village officials and law enforcement for help making the curve safer.
"We have met with the mayor and trustees multiple times," Peter Acocella, a Hampton Street resident who galvanized neighbors behind the cause, said this week. "We've also traded several emails with [State Assemblyman] Fred Thiele, begging them to take action to make our streets -- particularly Route 114 -- safer. Crashes at the curve on 114 have become a regular event. It is essential that bollards are installed to protect properties and trees along the road. We asked for this to be done as part of the 114 renovation project, and we got absolutely nowhere."
"What we need is police enforcement," said Ms. Feirstein. "You can put up all the signs and flashing lights you want, but if there are no consequences to breaking those laws, who is going to observe them, especially in the middle of the night?"
Sag Harbor Mayor James Larocca said that people's concerns are "genuine," but that the remedies "are not so clear."
"There's an inherently dangerous element there on 114, because of the curve. Add to that the proximity of the road to houses that are basically built to the sidewalk. There is not much setback there. Those are both built-in hazards," he said.
The volume of traffic along that stretch has also increased, "especially in the last few years," the mayor noted. In December, he and Chief Austin J. McGuire of the village police met with members of the ad hoc committee and discussed the feasibility of discontinuing two-way traffic along Division Street, where it meets Route 114. Barriers along 114 could be another possibility, although, Mr. Larocca said, "You have to be certain any barrier strategy increases safety and doesn't become a danger itself."
New York State recently enacted a law allowing villages to set speed limits as low as 25 miles per hour. "I think it's time we look at the speed profile again, to be sure we're updated," the mayor said.
He has invited the Feirsteins to meet with him. "I'll endeavor to get the director of traffic and safety for the State Department of Transportation in our region at that meeting," Mr. Larocca said. Hampton Street/114 is a state highway, so "anything we do must be in collaboration, or at least in consultation, with the state."
With reporting by Christopher Gangemi, Tom Gogola, and Christine Sampson
