Law-abiding motorists are taking their lives into their hands while trying to navigate Water Street in the City of Newburgh. A reporter from The Newburgh News was nearly struck head-on while filming with a dash cam as part of an investigative report. See a full video compilation below.
Lazy and ignorant drivers are parking their cars dead smack in the middle of the road while they run inside to chow down on meals or stand in long lines to pickup their food. Water Street is a main thoroughfare running past the City of Newburgh waterfront, which also carries a high volume of traffic connecting the Town of Newburgh and New Windsor.
The Newburgh News has received numerous complaints from readers about drivers frequently parking in the middle of the road and abandoning their vehicles while they head inside Hudson Taco or The Pizza Shop to conduct their business. Traffic is forced to either stop and wait for the drivers to finish inside the restaurants, or take a chance at illegally driving into oncoming traffic and hope to make it through alive.
As innocent drivers try to pass through the area unscathed, they are forced to drive down the wrong side of the road as other vehicles are backing into or pulling out of legal parking spaces on the shoulder of the road. Simultaneously, other motorists were seen frequently making illegal U-turns in the middle of the road while oncoming traffic approaches from the wrong side of the road. Water Street has turned into uncontrolled chaos, several readers of The Newburgh News have fumed.
Even a City of Newburgh Parking Enforcement Officer was forced to wait for hungry motorists to finish up inside and move their cars out of the middle of the roadway. A parking officer maneuvered around multiple illegally parked vehicles three separate times in less than one hour on Friday night.
The enforcement officer stopped to speak with a driver who was parked on the shoulder of the road blocking a crosswalk, but neither of the vehicles could leave because they were sandwiched in by a row of empty cars illegally parked in the middle of the road. The parking officer patiently waited for the illegally parked cars to leave before checking on parking meter violators in nearby lots.
“It’s a s— show out there every night,” said one employee of the pizza place who did not have time to talk.
The City of Newburgh Police are often backlogged with emergency calls during peak times and seldom have time to enforce parking laws. Instead, a Parking Enforcement Officer is assigned to issue parking tickets across the city.
“I watch it happen all the time. It’s crazy,” said a homeless woman who collects money on Water Street near the restaurants. She declined to provide her name. “Someone’s gonna get killed!”
See the video below:
