Originally Posted by
towhook
ATC is not responsible for VFR traffic. What is so upsetting about this? Lets say you are walking down the street and see a mother and her young boy walking towards you. The mother gets distracted by something and doesn't notice that her child has run out into traffic. Are you going to take action to prevent an accident? Of course. If the kid got run over might you feel like there was more you could have done? Of course. Are you at fault for the kid getting run over? No. It sure would be nice if ATC was always looking over my shoulder to be my personal guardian angel but that just isn't the way things work, so I don't expect them to catch my mistakes for me. When VFR, over the Hudson or not, you are responsible if you run into another aircraft.
But they are operating a government safety system, paid for by all of us (along with their salaries). They have to do their IFR job first, but if they have any time left over (such as enough time to make a personal phone call) they should be doing what they can for VFR flight safety. This is an accepted concept in ATC.
If their legit workload is high, and a 1200/1200 midair occurs, you cannot hold that against them. But if they just sat there with nothing else to do and watched the dots merge...bad jujus.