Police investigate crash on Long Island Expressway near Commack Road

A westbound Long Island Expressway crash near Commack Road in Dix Hills sent a Westbury man to the hospital with serious injuries and shut the North Service Road at Commack Road for hours Friday afternoon. Suffolk County police said the single-vehicle crash happened about 3:06 p.m. and involved a 2011 Honda that left the roadway, struck a pole, overturned and landed on the entrance ramp to the South Service Road. All westbound lanes reopened around 6:30 p.m.

Police identified the driver as Taysi Abdallah, 38, of Westbury. He was taken to Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip with serious injuries. The crash left drivers facing a long delay in a corridor that carries school traffic, work commutes and local trips across central Suffolk, where the LIE service roads can quickly clog when one lane or ramp is blocked.

The incident landed in the stretch of the expressway between Exit 52 and Exit 53, an area that has become a familiar pressure point for Suffolk motorists. The New York State Department of Transportation placed the crash near Exit 53, underscoring how tightly packed the interchanges, ramps and service roads are in the Dix Hills area. Even a single-vehicle wreck can ripple across Commack Road, the North Service Road and nearby neighborhood streets within minutes.

That corridor is built for heavy flow. NYSDOT Region 10 says the Long Island Expressway has 80 miles of HOV lanes between exits 32 and 64, and the agency maintains about 5,300 state highway lane miles and 546 bridges on Long Island. It also relies on 435 cameras, road sensors and the 511NY traffic system to track congestion and incidents in real time. In August 2024, state officials completed a $27 million modernization project at Exit 53, saying it was designed to improve safety and connectivity at one of the region’s busiest interchanges. The interchange serves major shopping centers and the largest industrial park on the East Coast.

For drivers in Dix Hills, Commack and the surrounding Suffolk towns, Friday’s crash was another reminder that the LIE corridor remains one of the county’s most vulnerable chokepoints. A midafternoon incident near the service roads can turn a routine commute into a two-hour crawl and leave the surrounding network carrying the spillover long after the damaged vehicle is gone.