In January, James Brown and Dwayne Campbell were killed in Waterville after being struck by a car while working in a construction zone on I‑95.
YARMOUTH, Maine — Maine State Police have pulled over and ticketed hundreds of drivers for speeding in construction zones since a crash in January killed two construction workers in Waterville.
Cpl. Robert Burke, of Troop I, initiated the construction zone speeding enforcement details after two Maine Department of Transportation workers, James Brown and Dwayne Campbell, were killed after they were hit by a car while working on a bridge in Waterville. Burke, the commander of the state police honor guard, drove in the procession and honorable transfer of Brown and Campbell.
“I think it brought it to the forefront of our concern,” Cpl. Burke said. “We thought that we needed to step up our enforcement, to try to prevent that from happening again.”
Since the incident, police have performed one of these targeted details each week, all over Maine: South Portland, Yarmouth, Augusta, Bangor, and Clinton. Burke said the Yarmouth location was so busy, they repeated the detail there twice more.
“I don’t honestly think they’re doing it on purpose. I just think they’re not paying attention to what they’re doing,” Burke said. “They’ll look back upon it, saying, really, I’m just late for an appointment, or I’m late for class, and that’s causing me to put other lives in danger. The risk versus reward isn’t there.”
Burke said they stopped more than 230 violators and issued more than 200 tickets in 14 total hours of details. He said each one lasted two hours, finding dozens of violators each time. He said educating drivers is becoming necessary because they do not pay attention to or follow warnings, including high-visibility and reflective signs and cones, and speed limit monitors that tell drivers how fast they are going.
“There’s limited place to correct mistakes on I-295 in a good area. But when you incorporate a construction zone where you take away the breakdown lane and you take away the median, you can’t make mistakes because a mistake is going to lead to an automatic crash.”
There are so many people ignoring the warnings, Burke said, that police cannot pull them all over. They enlist the help of local agencies, like municipal police, to spread awareness and education about the dangers during these details.
“Nobody wants to get a ticket. Nobody does. But it may save you from killing somebody in the long run.”
For state police, these speeding enforcement details also serve as leadership training. During each of the details, Burke has acted in a supervisory role, while a younger Trooper leads the briefing and after-action report. The Trooper must also account for other real-life dangers of conducting enforcement in a work zone, like how to handle a crash if it happens. Burke said during one of the details, officers gave feedback about sand and dirt blowing around, making it hard for them to focus on traffic stops. Troopers attend these trainings during their normal shifts, avoiding any overtime pay.
Burke also said that Maine has “outgrown” I-295. He said that the highway has many curves, hills, and limited sight lines, which, combined with more cars on the road than ever before, creates an issue.
According to the Maine Department of Transportation’s Crash Query Tool, 54 crashes happened in Portland on I-295 alone in 2025. South Portland saw 40 crashes on I-295 in 2025. In Yarmouth, the DOT reported 41 crashes on I-295 in 2025 in one location alone — noted in the database as a “high-crash location.”
“A vehicle traveling at upwards of 75 to 85 miles an hour that strikes a human being is going to be catastrophic,” Burke said.
