THE MAKING OF A MONSTER

Centuries ago, it was an idyllic earthen path. Today, it's the most dangerous road for cyclists in America.

THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD ANDREW ALATI BEGAN BIKING SOUTHBOUND ACROSS Hempstead Turnpike on the afternoon of June 30, 2019. A thunderstorm had just rolled through, but the sun was back out and all eight lanes gleamed in the light like bright teeth.

Andrew was headed to Target. It was just on the other side. His friends Aiden and Ethan were already there. For years, the boys' parents had driven them across the eight-lane thoroughfare that lay like a dividing line down the middle of the residential neighborhoods where the families lived. The street was a dark presence, a real monster. Everyone knew it. Drivers had hit a lot of people on Hempstead Turnpike in the last decade, an average of three a month.

But Andrew and his friends were now officially teenagers and the parents had decided amongst themselves that it was time to let them cross on their own. The kids had lobbied for it because they went everywhere on their bikes in the summer and waiting on their parents to take them across was an affront to their liberty. Plus, it was embarrassing. Andrew's mom, Diana, was the last to cave. She worried. She would always drive him across and drop him at the Speedway gas station on the far side so he could save face and ride the rest of the way to his friends waiting for him behind the high school. But how long could she keep that up?