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When I was on the city beat for The Ellsworth American, I covered a lot of car crashes — a right of passage for many young reporters, and not one I relished. There was one stretch of road that seemed particularly deadly — people drove fast and often drifted across the centerline into oncoming traffic.
There were so many crashes in a row that, for several years, I refused to drive the road altogether, opting instead for a detour that added about 10 minutes to my route.
Living in a rural state in an age of distraction, I think about inattentive driving a lot. As I bike my daughter to daycare I wonder whether drivers on the road will see us, or whether they are looking at directions on their phones or coordinating play dates or just gazing out at the lupins (which, to be fair, are putting on a spectacular roadside show this week).
This week, Monitor contributor Ben Cassidy brings us a piece about a simple solution to a complicated and deadly problem: what experts call "lane-departure" crashes. While they represented just 30 percent of Maine’s traffic collisions between 2010 and 2022, lane-departure crashes accounted for 73 percent of fatalities.
As Cassidy's reporting explains, many of these could possibly have been prevented by the installation of a simple rumble strip. So is the state making use of them?
Thanks for reading, as always, and drive safely.
— Kate
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