ELLSWORTH, Maine — If you drove one of the vehicles that was stopped last week by police on Route 1A between Ellsworth and Holden, you had a lot of company.
According to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, their deputies and officers with other agencies stopped 160 vehicles on that 22.5-mile stretch of road Aug. 3 through Aug. 7. During that five-day period, police conducted six concentrated traffic enforcement details, each only four hours long, the sheriff’s department indicated in a prepared press release.
Every one of those vehicles was traveling at least 15 mph over the posted speed limit of 55 mph, according to the sheriff’s department. Out of those 160 drivers, more than 130 were given speeding tickets.
Why? Because the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety has identified that stretch of road as one of the six most dangerous highway corridors in the state during July and August, based upon data of crashes that involved excessive speed. The other five include:
— Route 202 between Lewiston and Augusta (24 miles).
— Route 2 between Rumford and Dixfield (27.5 miles).
— Route 25 between Porter and Cornish (12.5 miles).
— Route 4 between Berwick and Gorham (45.5 miles).
— Route 1 between Brunswick and Stockton Springs (100 miles).
As part of a multi-state New England Drive to Save Lives campaign, the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, Ellsworth Police Department, Maine State Police and other law enforcement agencies throughout the state conducted concentrated traffic enforcement details last week along these six corridors.
A total amount of fines for all the speeding tickets issued last week on Route 1A was not available Friday. According to the sheriff’s department, the minimum fine for speeding is $119, which would put a minimum cumulative total on the 130-plus tickets at roughly $15,000. If the average ticket was $185, which is the fine for speeding 15 to 19 mph over the limit, the fines resulting from the tickets would have a total closer to $25,000.
According to Ellsworth police Chief Chris Coleman, between July 28 and Aug. 1 Ellsworth police also cited 24 drivers for speeding on Route 1 west of downtown Ellsworth, on the part of Bucksport Road known as Bridge Hill. He said those tickets were issued in response to complaints his department had received from residents on the road about people driving faster now that the road has been repaved.
“Speeding is a [safety] issue, especially with all the other distractions drivers have now,” Coleman said Friday.
Coleman said many of the tickets issued on Bucksport Road cited drivers for going 34 mph in a 25 mph zone, even though most were going faster than that. The point of issuing tickets is not to raise money, he said. It is to encourage motorists to obey the speed limit and to help improve highway safety conditions.
“There is a huge amount of discretion officers have to get that message out,” Coleman said about how much of a fine is imposed or whether a driver may just get a warning. “The goal we have is voluntary compliance with traffic laws.”
Ellsworth police plan to continue conducting speeding details throughout the summer, he added.
Stephen Hurley, a high school teacher from Los Angeles, was one of the 130-plus drivers who got a speeding ticket last week on Route 1A between Holden and Ellsworth. He and his family were in western Maine on vacation and decided to make a day trip to Bar Harbor on Aug. 5.
Contacted Thursday by email, Hurley said he was driving toward Ellsworth and had just passed another vehicle in a passing lane when he was stopped — and that two other cars were pulled over immediately after he was. Hurley said he hadn’t gotten a speeding ticket in 20-plus years and that his friends and family often tease him for driving slowly in Los Angeles, where traffic typically moves at 80 mph.
Hurley said he was going faster than 70 mph but was written up for going 65 in a 55 mph zone. He wrote that while he “somewhat” appreciates that the $173 ticket he got was not as steep as it could have been, he “mostly felt like I was a tourist who was getting stung.”
Getting the ticket appeared to have had the effect police sought, he added, but wasn’t so punitive that it made him regret travelling to Bar Harbor.
“If I was a Maine resident and this had happened, I would have been angry,” Hurley wrote. “I was very conscious of speed limits for the rest of the visit.”
