AUGUSTA – Encourage residents to call police and report illegal drivers.
Dish out longer jail sentences.
Take vehicles away from chronic operating-after-suspension offenders.
Those law changes and others will be explored to keep bad drivers like Scott Hewitt off the road, state officials said Wednesday.
At the direction of Gov. John Baldacci, a working group is meeting in response to a recent fatal accident involving Hewitt, and other cases of drivers operating after suspension. Hewitt, 32, was driving his tractor-trailer July 29 when it slammed into and crushed a car driven by Tina Turcotte, 40, police said. Turcotte died several days later.
At the time of the crash, Hewitt was driving with a suspended license, and his record included a prior fatal crash, 19 license suspensions and 42 driving convictions. The crash has prompted one big question: How could someone with that record still be driving?
On Aug. 6, Hewitt was arrested again in Presque Isle and charged with driving after suspension.
“Mr. Hewitt’s record makes him one of the top 300 repeat offenders in the state,” Robert O’Connell, director of driver’s license services at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, told the panel. A computer search showed 266 Maine drivers fell into “Hewitt’s group” of having 30 or more convictions, O’Connell said.
Drivers with 15 or more license suspensions numbered 14,354, O’Connell said. He cautioned that the numbers may be inflated because the records include people driving in the 1970s. Some have died or are no longer driving.
The state will probe how to change the behavior of what he called “a deadly group of people” who refuse to stop driving after losing their license, Maine State Police Col. Craig Poulin said. Two, three or four suspensions seem excessive, he said. Thirteen, 14 or 15 “are out of this world,” Poulin said.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap called the July 29 crash tragic, but “avoidable and preventable.” State officials will review policies and learn why Hewitt had not been stopped. The state wants “to make sure we don’t allow this to happen again,” Dunlap said.
The three agencies – the Secretary of State’s Office, the Maine State Police and the Department of Transportation – agreed Wednesday to explore the following changes:
• Creating an online registry, similar to the state’s sex offender registry, to tell the public who Maine’s most dangerous drivers are.
• Building a new phone system to encourage residents to call police to tell them when they know someone is driving after their license has been suspended.
• Impounding or booting vehicles driven by habitual operating-after-suspension offenders, and subjecting them to higher fines and longer jail sentences.
• Examining the independent trucking business to look at who is accountable for ensuring that those drivers are safe.
“Who hired Scott Hewitt?” Dunlap asked.
Maine State Police Lt. Chris Grotton said his commercial enforcement troopers are sorting that out.
Poulin praised the man who called police to tell them that Hewitt was still driving before he was arrested Saturday.
“Talk about a citizen’s initiative. Often people know other people” who should not be driving, Poulin said. When someone has 25, 30 or 40 convictions, “they represent a huge public safety and health risk.”
He asked how such people can be identified, and whether a registry could be created in which someone could enter a city or town, then get a list of people who have had their licenses suspended.
There’s a problem with that, O’Connell answered. Federal law makes individual drivers’ records private. Those records may be made public only after an individual’s name and date of birth are given.
The group plans to complete its review in four weeks. It will give its recommendations to Baldacci. The group agreed to meet again in 10 days.
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