Red Light & Stop Sign Accidents Lawyer

Red Light & Stop Sign Accident Lawyers Serving All of Long Island

Red light and stop sign crashes are among the most serious intersection accidents we handle, because the driver who goes through is rarely slowing down. A signal on Route 110. A stop sign on a side street in Commack or Massapequa. One driver decides not to wait, and the person crossing with the right of way takes the impact at full speed.

If that driver hit you, the law starts on your side. Running a red light or a stop sign violates the Vehicle and Traffic Law, and in New York that violation is negligence in itself. The burden shifts to that driver to come up with a non-negligent explanation, and very few of them hold up.

In 2024, 1,119 people were killed in crashes involving red light running and more than 141,000 were injured, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Half of those killed were not the drivers who ran the light. They were pedestrians, bicyclists, and people in other vehicles.

Most of these collisions are broadside impacts, and our T-bone accident page covers how intersection fault gets fought and proven.

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How a car accident case gets valued

Learn how Palermo Law handles no-fault, the serious injury threshold, and how a case gets valued on our Long Island car accident lawyer page.

Car Accident Help

Why Red Light and Stop Sign Accident Victims Choose Palermo Law

The driver who ran the light rarely admits it. By the time their insurance company calls you, the story has usually become a yellow light, a stop they swear they made, or a version where you were speeding. Every case we handle is guided by three principles.

Running a Red Light or Stop Sign Is Negligence in Itself

Three statutes do the work in these cases.

Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111(d) requires a driver facing a steady red light to stop and stay stopped until the signal changes. § 1172(a) requires a driver approaching a stop sign to stop at the marked line or before entering the crosswalk. And § 1142(a) adds a second duty: after stopping, the driver has to yield to traffic close enough to be an immediate hazard.

That last statute matters because “I stopped” is not a defense. A driver who stops at the sign, looks, and pulls out in front of you anyway violated § 1142 just as surely as one who blew through without braking. We see that version constantly, and insurance companies lean on the stop as if it ends the question. It doesn’t. The duty is to stop and yield, and the second half is the one that prevents crashes.

One more rule specific to driving here: right turn on red is legal on Long Island after a full stop, unless a sign prohibits it. That’s the default everywhere in New York outside the five boroughs. It’s also a crash pattern of its own. A driver creeping into the turn is watching traffic approaching from the left, and the pedestrian in the crosswalk or the cyclist coming from the right never gets looked at. The turn may be legal. Failing to yield while making it isn’t.

New York courts treat a violation of any of these statutes as negligence per se, and if you had the right of way, you were entitled to anticipate that the other driver would obey them. How that doctrine plays out when both drivers point at each other is covered on our T-bone page.

What a Red Light Camera Ticket Does and Does Not Prove

People assume a camera ticket decides the case. It doesn’t.

A red light camera notice in New York is a civil liability of the vehicle’s owner. It carries a fine, no points, and no finding about who was driving. It doesn’t establish negligence in your lawsuit by itself, and the defense knows it. What can matter is the footage behind the ticket: a camera that photographed the violation may have captured the crash, or the seconds before it.

Whether that camera exists depends on where you were hit. Nassau County’s red light camera program is active and has been extended through 2027, so a camera intersection in Nassau may have county footage of the violation itself. Suffolk shut its program down on December 1, 2024. At a Suffolk intersection there’s no county camera anymore, and the video that proves the runner comes from businesses, doorbell cameras, and dash cams. Private systems overwrite within days or weeks, which is why the canvass can’t wait.

Stop sign cases have no camera at all. They’re proven with witnesses, vehicle data, and the physical evidence of the impact, which is why the first week matters even more.

The Yellow Light Argument

The most common defense in a red light case isn’t “I had the green.” It’s “the light was yellow.”

That defense exists because of how New York law treats yellow. Entering an intersection on a yellow light is lawful. Yellow warns that red is coming; it doesn’t require a stop. So the fight is never about whether yellow was legal. It’s about whether the light was actually yellow when the driver entered, or whether it had already turned.

Every signal runs on a timing plan: how long the yellow lasts, and the all-red clearance interval when both directions hold red before cross traffic releases. Those records exist at NYSDOT for state routes and at the county or town for the signals they maintain, and they can be obtained through a records request. The clearance interval is why “we both had green” is almost never true. If cross traffic was moving on its green, the other direction’s light had been red for seconds, not an instant.

The crash time matters, because timing plans change by time of day. So does the vehicle data: a driver who entered late on a stale yellow usually accelerated to beat it, and the event data recorder shows the speed. Witnesses two cars back, who watched the light cycle while waiting, round it out. A yellow light story that survives all of that is rare.

Who Gets Hurt When a Driver Runs the Light

Half the people killed in red-light-running crashes are not the runners. They’re the people the runner hit.

For vehicle occupants, these are broadside impacts at intersection speed, and the injuries are serious: head and brain injuries, spine damage, and fractures on the struck side. For people outside a vehicle, it’s worse. A red light runner or a right-on-red driver who never looked right hits a pedestrian in the crosswalk with nothing between them. Pedestrians and cyclists hit by a driver are covered by that driver’s no-fault policy for medical bills from day one, and the liability claim runs alongside it.

What a Settlement Depends On

Proof of the violation is worth real money in these cases. An intersection claim where the runner’s violation is established by witnesses, video, or signal records settles like a case the insurance company expects to lose at trial. The same injuries with the violation still in dispute settle for less, and the carrier’s entire effort goes into keeping it in dispute.

The damages side works the way it does in every serious case: whether your injuries meet New York’s serious injury threshold, how consistently they were treated, what the crash cost you in earnings, and whether any of it is permanent. Be skeptical of anyone who quotes you a number before the medical picture is complete. How case value gets evaluated is covered on our Long Island car accident lawyer page.

What to Do After a Red Light or Stop Sign Accident

A few steps matter most, and two of them are specific to this kind of crash.

Reviewed by

Steven Palermo Esq.

Senior Partner, Palermo Law, P.L.L.C.

Steven Palermo is a Long Island personal injury attorney with more than 25 years of experience representing injured victims in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. He is admitted to the New York State Bar and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.