A Great Salt Bay Community School bus and a Hagar Enterprises plow truck collided on West Hamlet Road in Newcastle at 8:10 a.m. Jan. 7.
The drivers and the approximately 40 students on the bus were not injured in the low-speed collision, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Deputy Matthew Day said.
West Hamlet Road, already a narrow road, is especially narrow after recent snow and ice, Day said, and there was not enough room for the bus and the truck to pass.
A sideview mirror on the bus and a ladder on the side of the truck collided. The mirror bent back into the driver’s side window and broke it.
The school dispatched another bus to take the students to school.
David A. Wilbur, 62, of Damariscotta, was driving the 2005 Blue Bird school bus. Timothy D. Shipley, 53, of Woolwich, was driving the 2007 Mack dump truck, which was plowing and sanding the road at the time of the collision.
Day measured the roadway and the vehicles to confirm that there was not enough space for the vehicles to pass. The drivers “tried to avoid each other,” Day said.
The speed limit on the road is 25 mph. “Speed is by no means a factor in this accident,” Day said.
