About 7:10 a.m. on Thursday, November 3, 2016, a 2009 Ford F-150 pickup truck was northbound on Main Street (US Route 202) in Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine. As the 54-year-old female driver approached the intersection of Main and Frye streets, a 13-year-old male pedestrian was crossing Main Street from west to east, in a marked crosswalk. According to the collision reconstruction report of the Lewiston Police Department, video from a nearby security camera shows the pedestrian walking northeast bound on the sidewalk. [The pedestrian] positions himself in the crosswalk (western side) on the side of the road. He appears to wait until traffic continues by. When there is a lull in traffic he proceeds to walk across Main St still in the crosswalk. As he passes the centerline he stops briefly and appears to look right to see . . . the vehicle heading towards him. [The pedestrian] attempts to get out of the way by running east bound.. [He] was not able to get out of the way of [the] vehicle. [He] is struck just beyond the crosswalk.
The driver stated that she did not see the pedestrian until just before her vehicle struck him, and investigators found no evidence that she braked before the impact. The pedestrian first struck the pickup’s hood and grille, then became stuck underneath, near the right front wheel. The pickup dragged the pedestrian along the pavement for 176 feet before coming to rest. A passerby called 911. Emergency crews responded and pronounced the pedestrian dead at the scene.
At the time of the collision, it was raining lightly, the temperature was 45°F, and winds were calm. Civil twilight had just begun (6:51 a.m.), and sunrise was a few minutes away (7:22 a.m.). The roadway was wet, streetlights were illuminated, and vehicles had their headlights on. In-car video from the responding Lewiston Police Department vehicle showed visibility to be “very poor,” according to the department’s collision reconstruction report. The report notes that the video from the nearby security camera shows an oncoming vehicle pulling over immediately after the crash. The investigator who wrote the reconstruction report stated, “I do not think [the driver] could have seen the pedestrian based on the glare from the other vehicle’s oncoming headlights.”
We determined that the probable cause of the Lewiston, Maine, crash was the pickup truck’s excessive speed and the driver’s failure to yield the right-of-way to the pedestrian in the crosswalk. Contributing to the cause of the crash was diminished visibility due to the weather and low-light conditions.
