AUGUSTA – The vehicle that Gov. John Baldacci was in when it left the highway and rolled over Wednesday morning was a new, leased Chevy Suburban, recommended by state police for safety reasons.

The governor escaped serious injury; the vehicle was totaled, officials said.

Last January, as Baldacci was sworn into office, he was given the option of several vehicles. All were SUVs, his spokesman Lee Umphrey said.

The State Police Executive Protection Unit that guards the governor “likes SUVs for security reasons and because of the weather in Maine,” Umphrey said.

Former Gov. Angus King was also driven in an SUV, a Ford Explorer. The reasons were the same: safety and security.

Baldacci and his bodyguard “were lucky they were in that large, safe vehicle,” King said Wednesday. If they were in a smaller vehicle, the injuries may have been more serious. The SUV “might have saved him,” King said.

In 1999 the state police urged King to trade in the Chevy Astro van he was driven in for a large SUV. “I didn’t want to because it was a gas-guzzler,” King said. “But I finally gave in. It was the right thing to do.”

Because the governor spends so much time on the road, police want him in something heavy, and something with four-wheel drive. Compared to a van, an SUV has more of a front on it, King said. Like Baldacci, King always sat in the front passenger seat. Both governors refuse to sit in the back to avoid feeling like they’re being chauffeured.

News of Baldacci’s crash prompted King to call Maine Medical Center, where Baldacci was being treated, to find out if his successor was OK. King later reflected on the number of miles he logged while governor, plus the miles logged by his first lady Mary Herman. During the eight years, he estimated they traveled close to a half-a-million miles. “It’s a big state with lots of icy roads in the winter.”

Neither King nor Herman encountered any crashes. “It was luck,” King said.

He noted that he personally knows State Police Detective Jim Trask, the officer driving Baldacci Wednesday morning when the accident occurred on Interstate 295 in Bowdoinham. “He’s like family. He’s a very careful guy.”

When King took office, the vehicle used by former Gov. John McKernan was an Oldsmobile sedan. “It wasn’t me,” King said, adding he traded for a van that had room for his family.

Before taking office, Baldacci drove a Chevy Malibu, Umphrey said.

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