Motorcyclist seriously injured in Manorville crash with turning Tesla

A 29-year-old Manorville man was seriously injured when his KTM motorcycle collided with a 2020 Tesla at the Weeks Avenue and Calendar Road intersection, a crash that sent him to a Patchogue hospital and left both vehicles impounded for inspection.

Suffolk County police said James Lapham was riding north on Weeks Avenue at about 4:31 p.m. on April 10 when the motorcycle struck the Tesla as it turned left onto Weeks Avenue from Calendar Road. The Tesla driver, 42-year-old Stephanie Saladino, also of Manorville, suffered minor injuries and was taken to a local hospital.

The Seventh Squad is investigating the collision. Detectives had both vehicles impounded for a safety check as they try to determine the sequence of events that led to the impact. Police asked anyone with information to call the Seventh Squad at 631-852-8752.

Lapham was taken to NYU Langone Hospital-Suffolk in Patchogue, where serious injuries from motorcycle crashes often require rapid trauma and emergency care. The hospital, at 101 Hospital Road, serves residents of eastern Long Island and is listed in the state health profile as a 306-bed facility with an emergency department and Primary Stroke Center designation.

The crash spot sits on a road network that many Manorville drivers use to move between neighborhoods and toward nearby commercial corridors, and that creates a familiar danger point: left turns across through traffic. Motorcyclists face especially high risk in those collisions because they have little physical protection and can be hard to judge in a driver’s sight line, making even a routine turn into a potentially life-changing crash. Here, the impact at Weeks Avenue and Calendar Road turned a late-afternoon drive into a serious injury case now under police review.