‘The real solution is to stop driving like jerks.’ Highlighting dangerous behavior on Staten Island’s Hylan Blvd.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A recent Advance/SILive.com podcast highlighted the dangerous driver behaviors fueling Hylan Boulevard’s reputation as the borough’s most treacherous roadway.

After spending hours documenting traffic conditions on a recent Friday afternoon for the “Staten Island Traffic SOS” special series, the reporting team captured a disturbing pattern of reckless driving that helps explain why Hylan accounts for “roughly one third of all motor vehicle fatalities in the borough over the past decade.”

You can watch the podcast on the Advance/SILive.com YouTube page.

The team spent five hours positioned along Hylan Boulevard from Grasmere to New Dorp monitoring hotspots and tracking buildup.

“People were riding in that bus lane, going through the light straight ahead, not turning, just simply trying to cut people off, and beat the traffic,” said breaking news reporter Luke Peteley, describing one of the most common violations observed. Despite clear rules that bus lanes are restricted during certain hours and only available for immediate right turns, drivers were repeatedly observed using these lanes as personal express routes.

Peteley was positioned at the Midland and Lincoln avenue intersections with Hylan.

The team, including lead data reporter Erik Bascome, traffic reporter Mike Matteo, and breaking news reporter Shaina McLawrence, documented numerous instances of drivers taking dangerous shortcuts and making illegal maneuvers out of sheer impatience. Perhaps most alarming was Peteley’s account of a driver who, frustrated by a temporary obstruction, responded with a potentially deadly decision: “Blatant red light, blew right through it.”

This pattern of impatience manifests in multiple ways along Hylan. Bascome noted that when examining the root causes of pedestrian fatalities, the failure to yield the right of way emerges as a major factor.

“To me, it means that you’re impatient,” Bascome explained. “Ninety percent of drivers, I would imagine, know who has the right of way in a given situation... if you’re not adhering by that, it’s because you want to just make your turn real quick before the pedestrians get to cross.”

The investigation revealed how Hylan Boulevard’s traffic congestion creates a perfect storm for dangerous driving behaviors. With trips of just four miles taking up to 46 minutes during peak hours, drivers grow increasingly desperate to make progress. Peteley captured this frustration, noting: “It takes 45 minutes to get four miles... Think about how far you can get when you go to Jersey, right? I mean, to get to Atlantic City, south Jersey, it’s two hours. Almost half of that just to go four miles on this Island.”

Better enforcement?

The team also questioned whether better enforcement was needed.

Despite witnessing numerous traffic violations during their hours of observation, including “people driving through bus lanes” and “kids with ski masks and motorbikes without license plates blatantly weaving through traffic,” Peteley noted: “I didn’t see anyone get pulled over at all through my whole time there.”

This lack of consequences appears to embolden dangerous driving habits. One Staten Islander who spoke to the team suggested “red light cameras should be installed at every light” to combat the rampant red light running that contributes to Hylan Boulevard’s danger.

The reporting team’s first-hand observations paint a picture of a roadway where traffic congestion has spawned a culture of rule-breaking and risk-taking.

As Bascome summed up the situation: “The real solution is for Staten Islanders to stop driving like jerks. I don’t know if that fixes the traffic, but maybe it helps with the safety aspect.”

Generative AI was used to produce an initial draft of this story from the podcast. It was reviewed and edited by Advance/SILive.com staff.