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By KEVIN WACK
MaineToday Media, Inc. 01/20/2008

MaineToday Media, Inc.

First in a three-part series

Once every 10 hours, on average, a driver with a suspended license gets into a crash in Maine.

What's more, one-quarter of these suspended drivers has been drinking or using drugs before they crash.

And when these collisions occur, it's far more likely that someone will suffer a serious injury or die than in crashes involving licensed drivers.

These are the key findings of a yearlong investigation by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. The newspaper found that suspended drivers -- while they represent a small minority of all motorists -- are involved in a disproportionately large number of serious crashes on Maine's roads and highways.

And more than two and a half years after a fatal crash on Interstate 295 focused attention on the issue, the dangers persist, despite efforts by legislators, state bureaucrats and police to keep suspended drivers from getting behind the wheel.

To reach these conclusions, the newspaper analyzed records from about 160,000 motor-vehicle crashes that occurred from 2003 to 2006 using a statewide database obtained through Maine's Freedom of Access Act; examined hundreds of individual driving records; and interviewed scores of motorists, victims, traffic safety researchers, policymakers and law enforcement officials.

The newspaper's analysis showed:

n When suspended drivers are involved in crashes, the likelihood that someone will die is six times greater than when properly licensed drivers crash. The newspaper's analysis found that 20 people are killed for every 1,000 crashes involving suspended drivers, compared with just three deaths for every 1,000 legal drivers in crashes.

n When suspended drivers crash, there is a four times greater likelihood that someone will suffer an incapacitating injury, which is defined as one that keeps the person from performing normal activities, such as walking or driving, at least initially. Seventy-five people suffer incapacitating injuries for every 1,000 suspended drivers in crashes, compared with 17 people for every 1,000 legal drivers in crashes.

n Suspended drivers are 10 times more likely than legal drivers to have been using drugs or alcohol at the time of a crash. For every 1,000 suspended drivers involved in crashes, about 270 of them had been using drugs or alcohol, compared with 27 out of every 1,000 licensed drivers involved in accidents.

n Just 1.4 percent of all drivers in the roughly 160,000 crashes from 2003 to 2006 had a suspended or revoked license, yet they accounted for 4.2 percent of drivers in crashes where someone was killed or seriously injured.

David Henderson, executive director of the Safety & Health Council of Northern New England, a traffic safety advocacy group, said he was astounded after reviewing a summary of the newspaper's findings.

"The accident and death statistics in Maine resulting from suspended-driver crashes are truly astonishing, and very sad when realizing that many of these accidents could have been prevented," Henderson said in a statement. "These statistics reveal a major public safety issue that must be addressed."

Paul Gaspar, executive director of the Maine Association of Police, said the findings underscore the importance of keeping suspended drivers off the road. "I think it sends a clear message to the public that the issue is a serious one," he said.

Pat LaNigra, whose daughter, Tina Turcotte of Scarborough, died as a result of injuries she received in the July 2005 crash on I-295, said in an e-mail: "If this doesn't show that more should be done about suspended license drivers, then I don't know what would. Obviously more must be done."

In response to the newspaper's findings, Gov. John Baldacci said that the numbers are "certainly higher than we would like to see" but noted that the state has made improvements to help stop the problem.

"The state has made great strides in recent years to stop suspended drivers from driving on Maine's roadways," Baldacci said in an e-mailed statement. "There is always room to improve our efforts, but the State Police are clearly dedicated to this effort and will continue to crack down on suspended drivers."

The newspaper's conclusions add to a growing body of evidence that suspended drivers pose a heightened hazard on U.S. roads. A 1997 study in California found that suspended drivers were 3.7 times more likely than legal drivers to be involved in fatal crashes. Six years later, in 2003, a national study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that one out of every five fatal crashes involved at least one motorist who did not have a valid license.

No one knows exactly how many people are on the road each day in Maine with a suspended license. State officials estimate that at any given time, about 2 percent, or 20,000, of Maine's 1 million or so driver's licenses are suspended. National studies indicate that roughly three-quarters of suspended drivers continue to drive.

About 20 percent of the suspended motorists in Maine lose their driving privileges for speeding or alcohol-related driving offenses, state records show. But a larger percentage of license suspensions, about 31 percent, result from the driver failing to pay a fine, which might or might not be driving-related. The remaining suspensions are for more than 100 other types of violations, many of which also have nothing to do with the person's driving history.

The evidence suggests that the biggest threats are posed by people who lose their driving privileges because they repeatedly violated the rules of the road, a finding that's echoed by law enforcement officials.

"Drivers who operate after suspension show a routine pattern of irresponsibility," said Anne Jordan, commissioner of Maine's Department of Public Safety.

DATABASE HELPS ASSESS IMPACT

The newspaper's investigation was prompted by a series of high-profile fatalities involving suspended drivers in Maine. Among the tragedies were a May 2004 crash that killed three women and four children from South Portland; the July 2005 crash that ended Turcotte's life; and a December 2006 crash in Poland that left six people dead.

The issue also was studied by the Maine Legislature, which in 2006 passed "Tina's Law," named for Turcotte, who was killed by a truck driver with a suspended license and a long history of driving offenses. Tina's Law imposes stricter punishments for some of Maine's most chronic suspended drivers.

Before the law was passed, state legislators did not study the overall danger that suspended drivers pose on Maine roads. Legislators knew there was a problem, so they focused on finding solutions, said Sen. Bill Diamond, co-chairman of the Legislature's Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety.

To examine the issue more deeply, the newspaper used the state's open-records law to obtain an electronic copy of a Department of Public Safety database with motor-vehicle crash records.

The database contains information on about 160,000 crashes from Jan. 1, 2003, to Dec. 31, 2006. Crashes are included in the database if they get reported to police, occur on a public road and result in either personal injury or property damage of $1,000 or more.

Drivers whose licenses were revoked after they were designated as habitual offenders are also counted as having suspended licenses.

The database shows that 3,452 suspended drivers, or 1.4 percent of the total number of drivers in crashes, were involved in collisions from 2003 to 2006. But the database does not show whether suspended drivers are more likely to be involved in crashes than drivers with valid licenses, or how often suspended drivers are at fault in crashes.

Nor does the database show whether the suspended-driver problem is more or less severe in Maine than in other states. The 2003 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that only 6.1 percent of drivers involved in fatal accidents on Maine roads from 1993 to 1999 lacked a valid license - the lowest percentage in the nation.

While there's no comparable national data from 2003 to 2006, the newspaper's analysis found that 5.9 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Maine during that period did not have a valid license.

Overall in 2006, the state had 1.25 traffic deaths for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled, which was below the national figure of 1.42.

But the Maine database shows that when suspended drivers get into crashes, the consequences are far more severe than when law-abiding drivers do.

TRAGIC TOLL: DEATHS, INJURIES

Crashes involving suspended drivers killed 65 people in Maine from 2003 to 2006 - an average of one fatality about every three weeks. The number of people killed in crashes involving properly licensed drivers was much higher - 720 deaths over the same four-year period - because there are far more licensed drivers than drivers with suspended licenses. However, the fatality rate when suspended drivers were involved was six times higher.

Roughly half of the people killed in suspended-driver crashes were the illegal drivers themselves, and most of the rest were passengers in their vehicles. In all but one of those 65 deaths, the newspaper's review found that the suspended driver was responsible for the crash. About one out of every three fatal crashes involving suspended drivers was a multi-vehicle collision.

More than half of the suspended drivers involved in traffic deaths were under 30 years old, and more than three-quarters of them were male, according to the state database.

Those results are consistent with national findings, said Jon Carnegie, executive director of the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University.

"Male drivers and young drivers are statistically more likely to receive violations, as well as to be involved in crashes," Carnegie said.

Typical of this pattern was a crash near Sebago Lake on a cool night in late spring 2005. Joshua Plummer, 23, of Naples was trying to elude a sheriff's deputy on Route 114 when he crashed into a tree. He died, and so did two passengers, 21-year-old Matthew Waugh of Westbrook and 18-year-old Tamera Hearn of Lafayette, Ore. Police said Plummer was intoxicated at the time of the accident, and records showed that his license was suspended because of an earlier suspended-driving conviction.

The database also shows that 260 people suffered incapacitating injuries in crashes involving suspended drivers from 2003 to 2006. A total of 4,179 such injuries occurred in crashes involving legal drivers over the same period - but again, only because there were far more crashes involving that much larger pool of drivers. When a suspended driver did get into a crash, an incapacitating injury, such as a head or chest wound, was four times more likely to result.

On Aug. 27, 2006, a 29-year-old suspended driver named Michael Dempsey was behind the wheel of a BMW, racing with a Ford Mustang on the Maine Turnpike in York at more than 80 mph, when the two cars collided, according to police. A passenger in the back seat of the Mustang, Brett Halliday, was ejected. He landed in a mud flat below a bridge, and the BMW landed on top of him.

Halliday was hospitalized, initially in critical condition. But he survived, and so did everyone else. No one has been charged in that crash; York County District Attorney Mark Lawrence said the case is still under review.

ADDED DANGER: DRUGS, ALCOHOL

The newspaper's analysis also shows that Maine's suspended-driver problem is closely connected with other forms of reckless driving, including driving under the influence.

From 2003 to 2006, 933 suspended drivers got into crashes shortly after drinking alcohol or taking drugs - one every 38 hours, on average. During the same four-year period, the number of properly licensed drivers involved in crashes after using drugs or alcohol totaled 6,116.

But suspended drivers who got into a crash were 10 times more likely to have been using alcohol or drugs than licensed drivers in the same situation.

Early on the morning of June 30, 2005, Harley Simon of Vassalboro drove off an Aroostook County road, killing a 20-year-old passenger, Nicole Philbrook of Caribou, and injuring two others. He was driving with a suspended license.

Before the crash, Simon drank a six-pack of beer while partying with friends at a lakefront boat landing, he said in a recent interview at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham. Simon, 28, said he was not drunk when the crash occurred, but he did fall asleep at the wheel. He is now serving a 12-year manslaughter sentence, with all but four years suspended.

Before the crash that killed Philbrook, Simon had a total of six convictions for driving under the influence and operating without a valid license. Less than a year earlier, he broke his back in a drunken driving crash.

Simon said he now understands that he has a drinking problem. He described Philbrook as a longtime friend.

"I'm depressed. I'm confused. I feel guilty," he said.

Robert Eger, a Florida State University professor and co-author of a forthcoming study on suspended drivers, said motorists like Simon whose licenses are suspended because of bad driving behavior are much more likely to get into crashes of all kinds.

"They show up two and a half times more often than those who are suspended for non-driving reasons," Eger said.

Motor-vehicle records examined by the newspaper show that at least 32 of the 46 suspended drivers involved in fatal Maine crashes from 2003 to 2006 had previously been convicted of operating without a valid license or an alcohol- or drug-related driving violation.

One of those drivers was 48-year-old Paul Hall of Stockton Springs. On Nov. 16, 2005, Hall crossed the center line of Route 221 in Glenburn and hit another vehicle, killing himself and sending the other driver to the hospital. He was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash, according to a police report. Hall, whose license was suspended, had 13 prior convictions for driving under the influence or driving without a valid license.

'THEY DON'T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY'

Drivers who repeatedly ignore the law illustrate the challenges facing police, prosecutors, judges and state motor-vehicle officials who are charged with keeping suspended drivers off the road.

After all, the main reason that traffic laws are effective is that most people obey them - or at least drive with greater caution because they fear being caught. But that's not true of everyone.

"I've had people say to me, 'Why don't you go out and get real criminals?'" said Jim Ambrose, a deputy with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department. "They don't take it seriously. And I don't know what we can do as a society to deal with that."

Last winter, Jason Young of Cushing was an inmate at the York County Jail after being caught driving with a revoked license. He has since been released, but in an interview at the time he said he didn't think that driving without a valid license was a big deal. "I think it's very minor," he said.

Young, 29, said that whenever he disobeyed an order not to drive, he always obeyed the speed limit.

But his driving record includes a conviction for driving to endanger, an offense that occurred while his license was suspended. Young's record also shows convictions for operating while consuming alcohol, criminal speeding, driving to endanger, failing to stop for a police officer and leaving the scene of an accident.

Over the last few years, authorities in Maine have worked to improve enforcement efforts by providing updated lists of suspended drivers to local law-enforcement agencies. In Cumberland County, the sheriff's office has been running periodic license checkpoints aimed at educating the public about the problem and catching suspended drivers in the act.

Tina's Law, which increased jail terms for some of the state's worst drivers, has now been in effect for almost 18 months.

Baldacci, who signed the bill into law, said in an e-mailed statement last week that harsher penalties have been shown to be a deterrent, though he also said that it's too early to know how effective Tina's Law will be.

"I believe it's a good law, and I believe it will make a difference," Baldacci said.

Yet the number of people prosecuted for driving with a suspended license is near where it was six years ago, suggesting that the problem persists, though it's difficult to untangle how changes in enforcement patterns and other factors may have affected the statistics. From July 2001 through June 2002, there were 11,956 prosecutions of suspended and revoked drivers statewide, according to Maine's court system. Six years later, the number of prosecutions had fallen, but only slightly, to 11,475.

Scott Turcotte of Scarborough, whose wife was killed by a suspended driver and later memorialized by Tina's Law, said the law is a good start, but more needs to be done. More than two years after his wife's death, Turcotte said he is still trying to cope with the loss.

"You just don't want somebody else to go through this," he said.

Staff Writer Kevin Wack can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

kwack@pressherald.com

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