By Kathryn Skelton,Staff Writer

Scott Hewitt is an anomaly behind the wheel. The Aroostook County truck driver, 32, is behind bars in southern Maine after a fatal July highway accident. It was the second fatal he’s been involved in driving a big rig here. His record and his gall sparked outrage and promises of swift, severe penalties in the future. Hewitt’s license was already suspended, his lengthy driving record marked with 22 other suspensions and 63 convictions. Days after the most recent fatal, he was allegedly caught driving again, without a license. But state records show few commercial drivers flout the law like Hewitt. In a Sun Journal check of almost 250 tractor-trailer drivers involved in accidents during the first eight months of this year, only one was charged with

operating after suspension, according to accident reports and Bureau of Motor Vehicles data. His case was later dropped. And for more than half of the drivers, their single accident was the only mark on their record in at least the last three years.

“It certainly illustrates, as a whole, commercial drivers are pretty safe, (but) I don’t want to underplay some of the gaps we’re looking for,” said Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap. “I don’t want to be a Pollyanna in that everything is OK. Obviously on July 29 it wasn’t.”

On that morning Hewitt’s tractor-trailer crushed Tina Turcotte’s car on the Turnpike in Hallowell, leaving a mangled mess of steel in the northbound lane. The Scarborough woman died two days later.

In the month since, Gov. John Baldacci has convened a panel to look at offenders who repeatedly drive after suspension and Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, has filed a bill proposing eventual jail time for them.

“Over the years, the state’s been bad parents, if you will. We’ve slapped their wrists. That’s it,” Diamond said. “There are other Scott Hewitts out there.”

Dunlap’s office has estimated that more than 8,000 Maine drivers have had their licenses suspended more than 14 times.

Crashes, convictions

People in Maine have about 44,000 auto accidents a year, most commonly involving cars. Commercial drivers account for about 2,200 of those, said Trooper Darren Foster, who specializes in traffic safety for the State Police.

A Sun Journal analysis of 241 truck drivers involved in tractor-trailer accidents in Maine from January to August found:

• One Quebec driver was charged with operating after suspension when he got into an accident leaving the Turnpike in Auburn last February. Charges were dropped in May;

• Two other drivers shared three old operating after suspension convictions;

• Drivers collectively had 247 prior violations, speeding being the most common;

• Fourteen of the 241 drivers had a total of 47 suspensions among them;

• They were involved in 42 prior accidents;

• Thirteen were identified as owning the truck involved in the accident;

• Two were suspended in the months after their accident. Two more later gave up their commercial licenses voluntarily;

• The worst driving record belonged to a New Hampshire man with 15 suspensions and 40 prior convictions, who had an accident in Cumberland, also in February. (Out-of-state drivers get a record here once they’re involved in an accident with more than $1,000 in damage or injury.)

‘All we know is the people who get caught’

“What it seems to underscore, if nothing else, is really what an outlier Scott Hewitt was,” Dunlap said.

Given that, he said, it’s difficult to understand why the Hewitt case has mobilized so many people. One month before that crash, a 23-year-old man allegedly trying to outrun police crashed into a tree in Sebago, killing himself and two other passengers.

He’d also been driving under suspension. He’d also been involved in a previous fatal, striking a pedestrian on a snowy Naples street in 2000, according to the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

That case was “almost identical in many ways, but that was out of the papers in two days,” Dunlap said.

He chalks it up the “Jaws effect”:

Tractor-trailers are big. They’re intimidating. It feels like there are lots of them on the road.

“Tina Turcotte was minding her own business and got killed. You start looking at every truck, ‘Is that a Scott Hewitt?'” Dunlap said.

Tractor-trailers in Maine have been involved in 69 fatalities in the last five years, about 7 percent of all traffic deaths, according to the Bureau of Highway Safety.

A total of 978 people died in vehicle-related accidents in Maine from 2000 to 2004.

Big rigs travel about 500 million miles a year on Maine roads, about 3 percent of all driver miles, according to the Department of Transportation.

In 2004, people drove about 15 billion miles here.

Diamond said that prior to Hewitt, he doesn’t believe the public knew driving after suspension was such a big problem in Maine. The number of violations for OAS for all drivers has increased 42 percent since 1995.

“I think generally the trucking industry as a whole is responsible,” said State Police Col. Craig Poulin.

He’s on the panel studying the OAS issue. A report with its recommendations is due soon. The panel has 10 early ideas, which include publicizing the names of the 100 most dangerous drivers in Maine, regardless of vehicle.

Even though it appears Scott Hewitt is the exception, and the number of convictions is low given the number of miles traveled by those 241 truck drivers, it’s very hard to measure the true depth of problems on the road, Dunlap said.

“All anyone knows is the people who crash, the people who get caught,” he said.

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