On Monday, June 25th we attended a moving away cocktail party on Central Park West for good friends moving from New York to Boston. The honorees arrived at the party directly from a meeting, reporting the sad news that a participant's lawyer had just suffered a terrible loss—her husband had been killed by a drunk driver in Southampton over the weekend. Avid cyclist and Strook & Strook managing attorney Tom Heftler had been struck on Montauk Highway while out for an early morning ride.

The next day we happened to attend a Southampton Town Board meeting hearing on speed limit reductions within the town. There was no mention of the death that weekend, or the fact that it was one of three road fatalities in Southampton that week. A police detective speaking in the Southampton Press said that the three deaths show no common causation and were "individual accidents." Makes us feel much better.

People don't necessarily respond to statistics until the problem hits close to home. Well this time it was a successful, connected, New York attorney, who was apparently a really good guy.

For years, residents have been begging for greater traffic enforcement, speed limit reductions, sign changes and road re-engineering. It's taken years to get even small measures, such as a crosswalk, implemented. Notoriously dangerous intersections, with a lengthy accident history, go unpatrolled.  A large population of drunk drivers, unaccustomed visitors and undocumented workers without licenses and insurance increase the danger exponentially.

There have been so many serious accidents at the Candy Kitchen crosswalk, that yet another, will be the fault of government. There is nothing more that the community or Fire Department can do, to warn our officials of the imminent danger. Montauk Highway is a state road and not controlled by the Town. But it is incumbent on our local officials to force action by the State. A year ago, state officials visited to survey the intersection and were to have provided fixes by the fall. We're heard no response since.

We desperately need help from our local elected officials—Southampton Town Board, State Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman—and we need massive enforcement now.