Could a stalled bill have stopped Hingham’s deadly Apple Store crash? – MassLive.com

From the Derby Street Shops car park in Hingham, past the Barnes and Noble bookstore, it’s an almost straight shot to the floor-to-ceiling windows that form the facade of the Apple Store.

This is the path prosecutors say a 53-year-old driver took as he speeded through the parking lot on Monday morning before his SUV slammed into the storefront. There were no protective barriers on the sidewalk that could have stopped the two-ton Toyota 4Runner in its tracks.

Similarly, many stores are unprotected from cars that might leave the roadway or parking lot on a path through their front walls. For years, some state advocates and lawmakers have sought to change that, hoping to force some businesses to put up physical barriers in front of their storefronts. In Massachusetts, their statewide efforts were unsuccessful.

In every legislature since 2013, Carolyn Dykema, a Holliston State Rep. who left the state legislature in January, introduced a bill that would require barriers to be placed between some parking spaces and retail businesses. Each of his five tries died before reaching a floor vote.

“When you start paying attention, it’s really shocking the number of accidents and how often they happen,” Dykema said when reached by phone on Tuesday.

The relevant data is tracked by the Storefront Safety Council, a national advocacy group launched about a decade ago with the aim of reducing the number of vehicle accidents in buildings.

Since 2014, the organization claims to have identified more than 25,000 examples of cars colliding with public buildings, transit stops and other public spaces. In “mostly preventable accidents”, thousands of people died and many more were injured, the organization said.

A notable incident occurred in Chicopee in 2010. On the morning of November 28, townspeople Kimmy and Albert Dubuque were shopping for Christmas presents when they stopped for coffee at a Cumberland farm in the corner of a four-way intersection.

As Kimmy Dubuque entered the convenience store, the driver of a Ford Explorer stopped his SUV on the other side of the intersection. Then his car started accelerating.

By the time it pulled up in front of Cumberland Farms, where Kimmy Dubuque was walking in looking for her coffee, the SUV was going nearly 60 miles per hour, court records show. There were no barriers between the parking lot and the storefront. Kimmy Dubuque, 43 and mother of a teenager, was killed as the SUV slammed into the store. A Cumberland Farms employee was injured but survived. Investigators later discover that the driver suffered a stroke while driving. He has not been charged in connection with the crash.

Several years later, Albert Dubuque filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Cumberland Farms, claiming the company had negligently failed to protect its buyers. As evidence, his attorneys presented a record of nearly 500 similar collisions at Cumberland Farms sites over a ten-year period. A jury in Hampden Superior Court awarded Dubuque more than $32,000,000 in damages, a payout later reduced by a judge to $20,000,000. In 2018, the Massachusetts Court of Appeals upheld the decision.

“Every time I hear about one of these situations it’s like ‘oh another,'” Dykema said.

“They happen frequently, they’re dangerous, and they’re so easily preventable,” she added.

The latest example came on Monday. According to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office, Hingham resident Bradley Rein was driving the SUV that broke through the front glass wall of the Apple Store, killing a New Jersey man working on construction in front of the store. and injuring 20 other people. .

Rein pleaded not guilty. In Hingham District Court on Tuesday, prosecutors said he told police his foot got stuck on the accelerator pedal as he drove through the parking lot. Rein tried to brake, he told officers, but was unable to. In an interview with the Hingham Police Department after the crash, he also said he had no medical issues, the car had no mechanical issues, and he had not used alcohol or drugs anymore. early Monday. A voluntary breathalyzer he took at the police station showed a reading of 0.00%, prosecutors said.

Dykema’s most recent bill — which was sent to a House committee in March 2021, where he remains — would have required new construction projects to include safety barriers placed between parking spaces in a side and sidewalks and buildings on the other.

The bill said the barrier could be a low retaining wall, landscape planter, bollard (a vertical pillar at about thigh or hip height) or some other design – as long as it could keep a car out. moving from leaving the parking lot or the roadway by mistake.

Joe Regan, of Hopkinton, was furious watching local media coverage of the accident on Monday. He was the one who raised the issue with Dykema almost a decade ago, and he was pleased with the attention she gave to the matter. He said they had tried in repeated legislative sessions, with the help of other lawmakers, to raise awareness and pass a bill requiring protective barriers to be erected between certain parking spaces and certain stores.

Regan had no initial connection to the issue. He runs a tree felling and treatment service.

But “at some point in life,” he said by phone Wednesday morning, “everyone sees something where they pick up the slack and see what can be done.” It was his project.

“In my heart, I thought it was pretty important,” he said. When Dykema left the legislature, he felt he had lost his connection to the state government. On Wednesday, Regan was discouraged. But he wondered if the Hingham crash would rekindle the problem.

These types of accidental deaths are “singularly preventable”, he said. ” It is very simple. It doesn’t require rocket science. I wouldn’t be here if that was the case.