The deadly Route 48 limo crash in 2015 and the North Fork’s growing wine industry led Southold Town’s longtime liability insurance carrier to decline to renew the town’s policy for 2017.
New insurance procured by officials will cost the town an additional $142,000, Supervisor Scott Russell said today.
Houston Casualty Public Risk issued Southold a notice of nonrenewal in October, according to insurance agent Jon Shearin of the Roy Reeve Agency in Mattituck. The carrier was willing to insure the town on different — and much more costly — terms going forward, Shearin said.
“We solicited all the public sector markets that are available on Long Island,” Shearin said. “We got a number of different proposals.”
The town has taken a policy with Travelers at a premium cost of $468,633 with a $25,000 deductible, Russell said.
The four other quotes were: $566,527, plus a cost of $45,504 to be paid over five years, with a $25,000 deductible; $700,310 with a $100,000 deductible; and $756,442 with a $25,000 deductible.
The town’s premium in 2016 was $321,000, the supervisor said. “The difference of $142,000 is unbudgeted.”
“All of the carriers had issue with the Route 48 accident,” Shearin said. “It was a disastrous situation, horrendous.”
Four young women were killed and four others were seriously injured in the July 2015 crash after their limousine attempted to make a U-turn on Route 48 and was struck by a pick-up truck. The victims, all between the ages of 23 and 25, had been celebrating a friend’s upcoming wedding with an afternoon visiting several North Fork wineries.
Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota in December released a special grand jury report that concluded the limo could not possibly have made the U-turn at that intersection safely. The limo driver had been indicted in March on four counts of criminally negligent homicide, and four counts of assault. But a judge in October dismissed all criminal charges against him — a ruling the district attorney announced he would appeal.
The county installed a traffic signal at the intersection shortly after the crash, but that did nothing to make it safer, the report said. The grand jury advocated a protected left turn signal at the intersection — something that county traffic engineers maintain is unnecessary.
The horrific crash “was without question one of the major issues when it came to pricing,” Shearin said. “Even though it’s on a county road, there is a possibility the town will have to pay a portion of that loss,” he said. “It intersects with a town road.”
He said the insurance carriers were concerned about future risk as well.
“Who’s to say something like this is not going to happen again? The wine industry out here is a vibrant industry,” Shearin said. “There are many limousines and other vehicles traveling on the roads to visit the wineries.”
“The town has been promoting tourism for years,” Russell said this evening. “We’ve been promoting our beaches, farms, open space and our wineries. We have been successful but, success has consequences,” he said.
“Liability insurance is the cost of doing business. Public beaches, ball fields, and a large workforce doing their job each day all factor into the calculated risk that the insurance companies are going to consider to determine policy costs,” Russell said.
“Land use decisions have to be added to the equation. In fact, every decision that gets made, or that doesn’t get made, inside of Town Hall has fiscal impacts. Sometimes they are immediate other times they are gradual but, there are impacts,” he said.
“We owe it to the taxpayers to consider that fact.”
