The Light Drivers Keep Running—Into By Barry Owens There may be no traffic signal in all of the city more abused than the one that lay shattered on the sidewalk last month at the northwest corner of White Street and Broadway. Neighbors say the toppling of the pole that holds the traffic light used to be a nearly monthly event. Now, mercifully, it happens only about once a year. And the day this year came on May 10, when the pole was clipped by a truck turning onto White Street and was sent unceremoniously crashing to the pavement. “I’m not cleaning this up,” said a Tribeca Partnership sanitation worker who pushed a broom and garbage can past the debris. To add insult to injury, the pole remained splayed in the middle of the sidewalk, its pedestrian signal still bravely blinking, for three hours, mostly ignored before police finally arrived, eased it to one side, draped it in yellow tape and called for a repairman. Noel Hollander, who lives across the street, gingerly stepped over the pole. “This is either the seventy-eighth or seventy-ninth time, I forget,” she said. “There used to be a city worker, the same guy every time, that would install the new pole, and he would always write the number on the side.” Kay Sarlin, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation,  said she could not verify that the pole had been knocked down that many times, but said records show that it had been toppled and replaced twice during the past two years. Sarlin said that the department was “aware of the problem” and had considered moving the signal further away from the curb, but that vaults beneath the sidewalk prevent planting the pole elsewhere on the corner. “I was worried about the turn,” said Jesus Cepede, a 37-year-old truck driver from Texas, who was making his first haul in the big city when he knocked down the pole. “I heard this racket and panicked a bit, but there was nothing else I could do.” Police gave Cepede directions out of town, but did not issue him a ticket. “It’s not his fault,” said José Navarro, a superintendent at 55 White Street, who pointed to what he said was the real culprit—the cars parked along White Street, with city permits on their dashboards. The car parked at the southwest corner of White and Broadway had a city probation officer permit in the front windshield and a “Batman” sticker in the rear. “The sign says ‘no parking’ for a reason,” Navarro said, noting that the street is a common route for trucks making deliveries to local textile merchants. “It used to happen a lot, maybe twice a month when there were more textile places down here,” said Mike Patel, owner of a nearby newsstand on Broadway. Patel took out a calculator and figured the cost of replacing the pole 79 times, which he, too, insisted is the number of times the pole has been knocked down. The Transportation Department said the cost of replacing the pole is $600. “But do you know how much it would cost if it were to come down on someone’s head?” asked Patel, knocking on wood. “Millions.” Late last month the freshly replaced pole remained standing, unmarred but for a promotional sticker for a rock band called “The Explosion” and, higher up the mast, a simple bit of graffiti written in black marker: “#80.”