It's time to pay the piper. The Nassau County Legislature voted on Monday, Jan. 28 to authorize payment of the $13 million personal injury verdict to Merryl Kihl, arising out of a 1995 accident on Quaker Meeting House Road, Farmingdale, which caused her very serious and permanent personal injuries. However, after doing so, Nassau County officials were quoted in Newsday as saying that they had "no choice" but to do so (Newsday, Jan. 30, 2008, P A7.).

Quite simply, that is not true. The county had knowledge of both the dangerous road and the many available options to resolve its problems prior to the accident which cost Merryl Kihl her health. However, just as Ford consciously chose to save money instead of lives in the 1970s when it refused to move the Pinto's gas tank, Nassau County officials did have a choice and they choose to sacrifice lives instead of spending the money required to make the changes required to make Quaker Meeting House Road safe...for those who live on it and use it every day.

Even more disgusting is the fact that the situation continues to this very day. This road took the lives of four people during one ten month period of time (between August 2005 and June 2006), with one of those accidents occurring just west of the accident which almost took Ms. Kihl's life. The other occurred further west, on one of the road's other sharp turns. I gave Nassau County officials actual, written knowledge of the hazards posed by this road prior to the first of these two accidents. I repeatedly sent letters, including copies of police reports, newspaper articles and my earlier correspondence, all relating to the hazardous nature of the road and the many accidents on it, to County Executive Suozzi and the commissioner of the department of public works. One such letter was dated just two months prior to the August 2005 accident which took the first life.

As a resident of the road, I am well acquainted with its hazards. I explained the specific dangers posed by this road and also offered specific solutions. Ironically, no county representative even responded to my letter until June 8, 2006, just 48 hours before the head-on collision which took the three lives just west of the intersection declared to be unsafe more than a decade ago. Ironically, I had specifically requested that a Stop sign be installed where Quaker Meeting House Road meets Puritan Lane, but the county's letter advised that the traffic control devices were "adequate." Obviously they were not.

For years, I begged county officials to look at the human toll instead of the financial toll of making this road safer. Once again, Nassau County has chosen to pay its victims and the families of the victims rather than to solve a well-known problem. And once again the taxpayers of Nassau County are left holding the bag. Nassau County officials made this choice; they should not now complain that they were backed into a corner with no way out.

Stacey Tranchina