On a clear December day in 2022, Kevin Curty of Yarmouth drove to the Dunkin Donuts on Route 1 just like he did almost every morning. He picked up a coffee for himself and one for his wife and drove home.
"About a week later, we went to our grandkids' basketball game in Saco," Curty says. "So we come out. Big dent in the side of my car. Perfectly round. Someone's hit it with the basketball."
At least, that's what Curty guessed when he saw a dent on the driver's side of the car, near the back. But not long after, a police officer showed up at Curty's house.
"He said, 'Did you have an incident at Dunkin Donuts?' I said, 'No, I don't go in,'" Curty recalls. "I thought he meant I got into an argument or fight in there or something. I said, 'I just go through the drive-thru.' He says, 'Well, I gotta show you something.'"
The officer held up his phone and played a video taken by a bystander. It showed Curty's car rolling through the stop sign at the Dunkin Donuts, colliding with a bicyclist, then driving away.
"And I'm like, 'Is he okay?'" Curty remembers asking the officer. "'I said, 'What happened? This can't be my car.'"
When his wife, Mary Ellen Lessard found out, she says she was beside herself.
"Because I thought, honestly, if I hit somebody, I'd know it. But Kevin didn't. He didn't realize it," Lessard says.
According to the Maine Department of Transportation, there are about 170 crashes on Maine roads each year involving bicycles. Portland-based attorney Lauri Boxer-Macomber, who specializes in bicycle and pedestrian cases, says one of the most common responses she hears from drivers is 'I just didn't even know they were there.'
"And it's not because the person wasn't conspicuous, because a lot of times my clients are in high visibility clothing," says Boxer-Macomber. "They're lit up like Christmas trees and they have reflective devices all over them, on their bicycles. But people miss them, because I think their brains are looking for cars and not people."
She says these crashes can leave lasting scars, both physically and emotionally, as it did for her client in this case, Steve Brown of Freeport. The collision left Brown hospitalized for two weeks. He required surgery for a broken femur, then another surgery six months later in Boston. His physical therapy continues. Once an avid cyclist who rode thousands of miles a year, Brown says it extinguished his passion for biking.
"Your whole life can change in one second," he says. "(Biking) used to be my health plan. It was how I could stay moderately healthy."
About a year and a half after the crash, a grand jury indicted Curty on felony criminal charges for reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, driving to endanger, and leaving the scene of an accident.
Brown says he wanted the driver to be held accountable. But something about the pending prosecution didn't sit quite right with him.
"I cringed, because it's such a powerful thing," Brown says. "And I just put myself in his shoes and thought, 'Wow, he must be struggling with that.'"
Brown says he told his attorney that he wanted to raise awareness to prevent future bicycle crashes, and a criminal conviction and potential jail time for Curty really wouldn't do that. So Boxer-Macomber suggested something else that might: restorative justice.
It's an approach that brings the victims and perpetrators of a crime together to try to find a meaningful resolution in conjunction with a criminal case.
"When two people are able to reach some type of a meaningful solution to a problem together, they're both empowered," Boxer-Macomber says. "And we have more people walking around the world feeling like what they do matters, versus feeling defeated by a system."
Restorative justice isn't a new concept. But Cumberland County
District Attorney Jackie Sartoris says it's often misunderstood.
"That's, you know, 'mamby, pamby, woo, woo stuff' where we're not really holding people accountable," Sartoris says. "And that is not the way restorative justice is supposed to be used. Restorative justice should be used so the person is the most accountable they can be, which is to the person they harmed."
Brown and Curty agreed to try restorative justice, and last November - nearly two years after the crash - they met for the first time in Brown's attorney's office. Curty says he was nervous.
"My lawyer said to me, 'This guy's going to be ugly. He's going to be mad as hell at you. So when you go in, just stay calm and everything,'" Curty says. "I walk in, (Brown) stands up, smile on his face, sticks his hand out, 'Just wanted to talk to you. All this time, I just wanted to talk to you.' I says, 'What kind of a nice man is this man right here?' So he just calmed me right down. I was fine after that."
Guided by a facilitator, Brown says he and Curty weren't treated as adversaries, but as two people who both needed to heal.
"People have no idea how powerful it is when someone says 'I'm sorry,'" Brown says. "It's unbelievable. Now that is the essence: honest, truthful apologies and forgiveness. There's possibly very little more potent than that in the whole universe."
After two meetings they decided, along with prosecutors, that Curty would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failure to yield. Instead of a fine, he'd donate $500 to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine.
At Curty's court hearing earlier this year, Brown made a statement to the judge about the emotional toll of the crash.
"Now I have no desire to ride," he told the judge. "The trauma of a possible repeat is always present. It took away my joy of riding and a sense of safety on Maine public roadways." But, Brown continued, "Locking people up doesn't make victims like me whole. What does make people in my situation whole are getting folks to acknowledge harms that result from distracted driving, from feeling compassion for those involved in trauma of this nature, and changing their behavior."
As part of the agreement, Brown and Curty also decided to share their story outside the courtroom, a story that began in one agonizing moment three years ago.
"And yet, here we are talking to each other," Brown says to Curty. "We feel good about each other."
"The funny part is," Curty replies, "did you ever think - I didn't know you. You didn't know me. And now we're friends. I feel we're friends."
It's a reminder, Brown says, to slow down, pay attention, and treat others with understanding and empathy - both on the road and off.
Restorative justice in Maine
The Cumberland County district attorney's office is expanding its use of restorative justice, especially in less serious criminal cases.
"We're seeing a lot of low-level recidivism," says District Attorney Jackie Sartoris. "People are back in the system with minor stuff. There is not much kind of human connection in the criminal justice system."
These are misdemeanor cases for crimes such as shoplifting, Sartoris says, where there's an indirect victim. She says defendants meet with a community surrogate trained by the nonprofit Cumberland County Friends of Restorative Justice.
"Letting that defendant interact with a surrogate is our way of humanizing what they've done and saying, look, there is an impact here to people," she says. "It is not just some, you know, nameless big box store. There's an impact to people."
Since July, Sartoris says more than 65 of these misdemeanor restorative justice cases have been agreed to in Cumberland County. Defendants must pay a $150 fee, though it can be reduced. She says restorative justice is also recommended in some felony cases, where defendants and direct victims have more intensive meetings.
