CANTON – Two Canton drivers were uninjured in separate accidents Tuesday on Route 140.
About 12:45 p.m., a 16-year-old boy driving an older Toyota Camry failed to make the sharp curve before the Androscoggin River bridge and smacked a utility pole, splitting it in two places, assistant fire Chief Mark Blanchette said.
Oxford County Deputy Bill Nelson, who declined to identify the boy, attributed the accident to driver inexperience and speed. The youth had just gotten his driver’s license.
“He was going too fast for the road itself. It’s a sharp little corner, and all you got to do is take your eyes off the road for a millisecond,” Nelson said.
The car sustained an estimated $1,000 damage, he added.
Skid marks on Robert Carlton’s lawn at 240 School St., also called Route 140, showed the teen just missing two crosses that were erected after the last fatal accident on the corner about a year and half ago.
Carlton said the car in that wreck landed upside down on its roof in his driveway.
“We’ve seen some bad ones there,” he said, watching firefighters direct traffic around the wreck while waiting for Nelson to arrive from Andover.
“One guy run right into the corner of the house and knocked it off the foundation,” Carlton added.
He and his wife witnessed Tuesday’s wreck from their lawn chairs.
“You ought to have heard the tires squealing while it skidded sideways,” he said.
Back at the scene, a Med-Care Ambulance medic was waiting for the boy’s mother to arrive from work to sign off on transport to Rumford Hospital, Blanchette said.
Grim-faced, he added, “These things come in threes,” then predicted that the next accident would require using hydraulic extrication equipment.
The first accident happened last Friday, when Mabel Ferris, 84, of Canton, died of injuries suffered when her sport-utility vehicle left Canton Point Road and slammed head-on into a tree, according to State Trooper Daniel Hanson.
In Hartford, at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, Gilbert Armstrong, 43, of Canton, avoided injuries after the 1998 Ford Ranger he was driving, rolled off Route 140 and struck a tree, Oxford County Deputy Michael Halacy said late Tuesday afternoon.
“He was lucky. Another 5 feet and he probably would have gotten injured,” Halacy said.
The westbound pickup slid across the centerline sideways, veered off the road on a corner near the Hartford town office, and rolled onto the driver’s side down a slight embankment. The truck was totaled, Halacy added.
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