Surviving Route 9

Records detail hundreds of accidents
Julia Stalder first thought the object emerging from the darkness on April 11, 2024, and hurtling toward the windshield of the Toyota Highlander she steered south on Route 9 looked like a "big black boat."
It was, in fact, a Chevrolet SUV being driven north by a Garrison man. As it rolled into Stalder's path, she turned right toward the shoulder to avoid the impact and save two lives: hers and a then-11-year-old daughter riding in the back.
With the Highlander shuddering from the sudden braking as it headed off the road, south of Skyline Drive outside the Cold Spring Mobile Home Park, "I thought, 'I am going to die in this moment; this is how it ends,'" said Stalder.
Both she and her daughter are survivors, however, of one of the nearly 500 one- and multi-vehicle crashes that occurred from 2020 to May 2025 on the serpentine, 14-mile stretch of Route 9 between South Mountain Pass and Carol Lane, where cars and trucks often exceed the 50 mph speed limit and residents confront tight windows when trying to enter from side roads that bisect at sharp angles.

Those accidents, which fell last year after rising in 2022 and 2023, range from minor fender-benders to head-on collisions and rollovers. They are chronicled in traffic reports and data obtained by The Current through a Freedom of Information Law request to the state Department of Transportation (DOT).
Some information is missing. For example, the 2025 reports do not include one for the crash near Graymoor that killed a Beacon man, Norton Segarra, on Jan. 17. But the reports and data show that, along with the deaths of Segarra and three other Highlands residents since 2020, nearly 200 people have been injured and businesses and residences lining the route have suffered property damage.
More than 25 percent of the mishaps occurred at or near seven intersections: Fishkill, Indian Brook, Old Albany Post North, Snake Hill/Travis Corners and Stone Ridge roads, and Routes 301 and 403. According to reports from the Putnam County Sheriff's Office deputies and state troopers responding to the incidents, most stem from drivers following too closely or driving at unsafe speeds, swerving to avoid deer or other animals, and/or failing to yield.
For years, elected officials and residents have cited some of those behaviors in a litany of letters petitioning DOT for remedies. While the agency has refused to lower the 50-mph speed limit, it is installing a long-sought-after light where Snake Hill and Travis Corners meet Route 9, just south of the entrance to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare campus at the former Garrison Golf Course.

It was at that intersection that Jacob Rhodus of Beacon collided with a motorist who turned left onto Snake Hill Road just as he passed through the intersection while driving south on Route 9. Less than 3 miles north, a driver who took to a shoulder in July 2023 struck Daniella Benavides as she retrieved trash cans from the end of the driveway of her house along Route 9.
She and her husband, whose children are 3 and 6 years old, are selling "because we can't live on this road anymore," said Benavides. "We feel unsafe living on the property."
'I remember seeing the sky'
Even before being struck, Benavides had concerns. In the five years that she and her husband have lived on the northbound side of Route 9, just south of the Garrison Volunteer Ambulance Corps, at least two vehicles have crashed into the stone wall at the end of their driveway. They've witnessed three accidents in the past year, she said.
On July 14, 2023, as she walked to the end of the driveway to retrieve trash cans, Benavides noticed that traffic had slowed - because of a school bus or car stopped while waiting to turn left into a driveway, she believes. About four cars south, Benavides saw a Toyota turn into the shoulder. As it headed toward her, she realized, in a "weird, slow-motion moment," there was no time to move out of the way.
"I remember seeing the sk...