A Multiple-Choice Quiz: Patrol Car 6, Where Are You? (And A Plea To HPD)

The 9G speed trap, where HPD regularly enforces the
lowest hanging and most inconsequential fruit

Once again, dear readers, it is quiz time!

Answer the following question with one of the seven choices offered:

Where are you much more likely to find a Hudson police officer in their patrol vehicle by the side of the road doing their best to enforce the city's speed limit and watching for drivers making moving violations such as failing to stop at a red light or stop sign?  Is it:

A)  At State & 6th downtown where drivers ignoring the stop signs are common?

B)  At Union & 5th downtown?

c)  At Warren & Front downtown?

d)  Downtown on hilly Prospect Avenue or Columbia Street surrounding the hospital, where speeding and accidents are common?

e)  On Columbia Street or Green Street where speeding and accidents are an accepted part of our downtown truck route? 

f)  On any downtown street?

g)  On State Route 9G, nowhere near downtown and nearly a half mile south of Warren Street near the city limit at the bottom of a steep hill headed into Hudson, commonly known as Hudson's speed trap, where no sidewalks, intersections, streetlights, stop signs, businesses, pedestrians, children in strollers, parked cars or houses can be found?

If you chose g as your answer, as crazy as it may seem, you win the prize.  For those of you who chose wrong, it's likely that you don't drive often, or at all, on Route 9G.  While you may find the occasional HPD patrol vehicles parked at any of the downtown locations listed, you certainly won't find them there nearly as often as you will on Route 9G at the city border, well away from our downtown streets.

While on my way to Catskill this past Thursday, there were two Hudson patrol vehicles waiting at the location I describe in choice g -- the new, extra-large white one and a more common black one.  On Saturday afternoon I took the picture shown above at the same location -- HPD's preferred spot to lie in wait to enforce the traffic laws on 9G.  It isn't along a city street with a sidewalk, it's along a State Route at a speed trap at the bottom of a steep hill.  

A police officer who is parked a half mile from downtown Hudson can't observe a driver making an improper turn, speeding or running a red light or stop sign on Columbia Street or on any other downtown Hudson street, can they?

Hey HPD:  In case you haven't noticed, there is a serious and growing problem of reckless and speeding drivers in downtown Hudson.  Your efforts to enforce the traffic laws on State Route 9G appear to be having little to no effect on our downtown streets.  Are you enforcing the speed limit on 9G to make Hudson's streets safer or 9G safer?

 The scene of a vehicle-hits-pedestrian accident last week
 in downtown Hudson, far away from State Route 9G. 
The pedestrian was sent to the hospital, the driver was not.

As you likely know, last week a pedestrian in a painted crosswalk properly crossing Green Street with the right of way was struck by a vehicle making an improper turn by failing to yield the right of way to the pedestrian.  This is something that never occurs on Route 9G in Hudson.  The victim was sent to the hospital.  Is it possible that an HPD officer was sitting in their idling patrol vehicle on State Route 9G near the border with Greenport at the time of that accident involving a pedestrian in downtown Hudson?  Are there many vehicle accidents, pedestrian-involved or not, on Route 9G leading in and out of the city?

Please leave the speed trap on State Route 9G to the State Police Troopers so that your officers can have a larger presence downtown and enforce the traffic code and speed limit where it matters and where it might actually have a beneficial effect on people living, walking and driving in downtown Hudson.  This may keep a pedestrian or two from being run over, for example, or another car (perhaps a police vehicle) from being totaled by someone running a red light.  C'mon back downtown, HPD, we need you badly.  Show us you care about our city streets and the people using them.    

You haven't given up on us, have you?