News

Resident says he would welcome Laurel Park rap as speed trap

Jump Off Rock draws plenty of traffic to Laurel Park.

By Lightning Reports, Published: June 21, 2022

As far as Jim Dhom is concerned, the main road from the bottom of the hill to Jump Off Rock ought to be called Laurel Park Speedway.

Dhom appeared at a Laurel Park Town Board meeting last week to implore the elected leaders to crack down on speeders. A retired electrical engineer, Dhom lives at the top of the mountain, at 4150 Laurel Park Highway, giving him the full ride from top to bottom along his road and the Hebron Road shortcut. He offered to raise enough money from neighbors to buy an electronic sign that warns motorists that they’re speeding and to buy a radar gun for town police.
“I’m telling you people will donate thousands of dollars just to buy this,” he said.
The police department’s practice of parking alongside the road, he added, has proved to be an ineffective deterrent.
“We’re not asking you to park a police car on the side of the road, we’re asking you to write tickets,” he said. “That’s what’s going to stop this. I’m telling you, you’ve got to write tickets. I totally can get a hundred people in this room, you just tell me how many it takes.”
It’s high season for visits to Jump Off Rock and apparently many tourists and local drivers can’t wait to get there. Dhom thinks it would be fine if Laurel Park became known as a speed trap. If police aimed the radar gun at the cars racing up and down the mountain, he said, “it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”