Maybe a guardrail could have saved Jeannine Morin.

On March 2, the 66-year-old Lewiston woman, suffering from a stroke, drove her vehicle through decorative downtown metal fencing into an ice-covered canal below. She died of hypothermia, after lying undiscovered for several hours.

Or, perhaps a guardrail could have killed Jeannine Morin. Slippery conditions on the day of the crash have prevented police from fully assessing the circumstances of her accident, aside from its medical cause. It’s possible her hurtle toward the canal could have been fatal, if she had struck a fixed object instead.

Both arguments are logical. If the city left the guardrail intact – several years ago – Morin likely would not have died so tragically. If the city had left the guardrail intact, her powder-blue Toyota – sliding out-of-control in wintry muck on Ash Street – could have obliterated upon impact.

There’s little way to be certain. And finger-pointing in City Hall does nothing but rehash old battles of who says they were right, when, and why. The decision was made to remove the guardrail, and more than a decade later, a woman died when her car slid through its non-sturdier replacement.

We mourn for Morin, and urge the city to use her untimely passing to conduct a thorough review of the Canal Street corridor to ensure it’s designed, and decorated, as safely as possible. Morin’s death shows the unanticipated is still the possible, and if practical safety alterations exist, they should be implemented.

The common types of vehicles on the roads have changed since the guardrails were removed. Traffic counts in downtown Lewiston have likely evolved as well, given the changing face of the downtowns on both sides of the Androscoggin River. There’s little harm in assessing Canal Street safety for the 21st century.

In the wake of a similar crash in coastal Maine in January 2005, in which a woman was killed when her sport-utility vehicle fell more than 80 feet into an ice-covered limestone quarry, the call to action for improving safety along the quarryside route was shrill, and swift.

A Maine Department of Transportation safety audit made several specific, and obvious, recommendations, everything from guardrails to road reconstruction. With a legislative push, the agency made $250,000 available for the project, which was completed last year.

For the DOT to fund, bid, and complete a project in such a short period was mesmerizing. The propulsion was public safety, which started with a comprehensive review of safety along a heretofore strongly alleged, but not conclusively proven, dangerous roadway.

It’s a shame that death makes us ponder these issues. But the greater tragedy would be overlooking the opportunity to find deficiencies by failing to ask, “Is Canal Street safe enough?”