Fostering Community Action for Pedestrian Safety in Hempstead Village

The Incorporated Village of Hempstead is the most populous village on Long Island and in New York State. This vibrant community is home to about diverse 60,000 Long Islanders who travel by vehicle, bike, and on foot. But, with hustle and bustle comes safety concerns.

A study conducted by NYU Langone Health found that the majority of the pedestrian trauma patients treated in the system’s ED at NYU Langone Hospital – Long Island were coming from Hempstead Village. The area has a long-standing reputation as a dangerous area for pedestrians that remains true to this day.

Thanks to funding from The Safe States Alliance, Walk Safe Long Island and its partners recently took part in a timely project to assess Hempstead Village’s pedestrian safety needs and deliver education to address them. In partnership with NYU Langone and community advocate Jonathan Prevost, the New York Coalition for Transportation Safety and the Long Island Health Collaborative conducted a focus group with six Hempstead Village community stakeholders representing various sectors on June 4, 2026.

The focus group was recorded and transcribed using Zoom’s transcription function. The transcript was validated and qualitatively analyzed for key themes using grounded theory by four coders using ATLAS.ti web-based software, ensuring inter-coder reliability. Focus group participant feedback fell within two thematic groups or code groups: barriers to community action and safety solutions.

Here’s what participants had to say about barriers to community action and safety solutions.

Barriers to Action

Focus group participants identified a number of barriers to action and safety on Hempstead roadways during the session. Barriers spanned many categories, including road user behavior/attitudes, infrastructural problems, community unawareness of laws and protocol to incite change, immigrant-specific barriers, and public safety.

Some quotes to further illustrate the barriers identified:

Apathy: “I don't feel like most people even pay attention to [crosswalks, stop signs, and lights] any longer.”

Disregard for Pedestrians: “Crossing the street, of course, it's always a challenge, I think. It's not an environment where people feel like, you know, the pedestrian is necessarily respected or taken into account.”

Fear and Consequences: “[Community members are] concerned that they're not gonna be heard because they don't have a status… asking about who they are, where they come from, their social security, their date of birth, like, stuff like that that might put them at a little bit of a panic mode, being afraid that, you know, things are not gonna be taken into consideration.”

Language Barriers: “If we do get calls, sometimes I do have to outsource, you know, for additional assistance for language. So, I know that can be a barrier.”

Policy Limitation: “We're not allowed to have safety, you know, the bumps in town… [the Town] told us that there's a board that handles this, but currently, in Hempstead, we don't allow for the speed bumps.”

Road Congestion: “You know, a lot of people, and not a lot of space to move.”

Speeding Cars: “We get a lot of speeding going straight down Washington, heading into Garden City while our students are crossing the street.”

Traffic Safety Solutions 

In addition to barriers, focus group participants identified a number of proposed safety solutions. Solutions span many categories, including but not limited to community action, education, infrastructural improvements, behavior change, and stakeholder engagement.

Community Action: “The residents are very vocal and persistent when things feel unsafe.”

Crosswalks: “I'm not sure if that's simply, you know, if there could be more crosswalks… If you're familiar with Peninsula Boulevard, there's that tree-like kind of passage area. A lot of the students kind of cross in between there, and I think a lot of residents do.”

Education: “I think [Hempstead youth and adults] would definitely be interested in the workshop, most definitely.”

Mindfulness: “I actually find myself just being very cautious wherever I am now.”

Partner Trust: “I think advocating, you know, since I do have a proximity to the folks that can sort of make some of these changes, and like I said, being from the village and having grown up here, I think that is an added bonus, to really being able to advocate for a lot of the people who know I'm back. And when they do hear I'm back, you know, making sure that, you know, to be a voice in the sounding board, but also an advocate, like, in those spaces.”

Signage: “I think, you know, exploring that of, you know, stop signs for that area [by the high school], specifically on Peninsula Boulevard… I've noticed also a high volume of interest with that area as well, with, increase of desire of more signage as well.

Speed Bumps: “I think the community in some areas would be better served if we did have some of those [speed bumps], and could probably limit, a lot of the pedestrian, sort of crashes, and lower that crash rate.”

Stakeholder Engagement: “Sometimes [community members] say that they do call [a municipality], but then they don't hear back from whoever they're calling, so we mediate, we try to help, and our caseworkers kind of, like, help them through it.”

Street Lighting: “Like, in the front of our office, there was a couple of the poles that were not working, and there was not enough lighting, so that became a safety concern.”

Walking Audit: “For those who do walk in the community, when I'm home, I do walk through Hempstead as well, kind of just, like, do visual checks, see what's going on.”

Youth Engagement: “In that section of Hempstead, and especially youth, we try to make sure we connect with the youth to let them know about, pedestrian safety and traffic safety.”

Promoting Community Action and Safety Solutions 

Focus group participants were also asked to review and give feedback about Walk Safe Long Island’s Community Action Toolkit, which we tailored to Hempstead Village and presented at a September 22 workshop for community residents.

The Hempstead Village Pathways to Progress Toolkit is available for all Long Islanders on the Toolkits page of the Walk Safe Long Island website. The toolkit contains background information about the issues, tips for communicating with changemakers, copy-and-paste-able templates for your customization and use, and many more resources for those looking to take action to improve pedestrian safety in Hempstead Village and beyond.