USA TODAY International Edition
Laws let states keep crash data secret
In Maryland, a family of 3 died as resident battled the system
Richard Boltuck did not plan to spend most of his waking hours fighting with public officials. He just wanted the state to install a left- turn traffic light at an accident- prone intersection near his home in Bethesda, Md.
This request would drag on for more than eight years and place Boltuck, an economist, in the center of a national debate about just how transparent state and local governments should be when members of the public request information about dangerous roads, bridges and intersections.
His efforts took on new urgency when three members of a family died in a horrific accident at the very intersection that was the target of Boltuck’s complaints.
“This tragedy,” he said, “highlights the need for the engineering studies we have been requesting.”
But Boltuck’s efforts to get those studies from the state were delayed for years. He and others in his neighborhood began asking for the information in 2008, as they sought data to challenge the state’s conclusions that no leftturn light was needed. They were stymied by a little- known provision of federal law that gives states wide latitude to keep important engineering studies and other data secret from the public.
Federal law 23 U. S. 409 has been interpreted by many state governments and state courts to allow their agencies to keep studies, surveys and other data about dangerous roads, bridges and intersections secret if there is even a remote possibility that someone might one day sue the government for failing to make needed redesigns or repairs.
Boltuck bumped up against this barrier when he asked for what he thought were “gardenvariety public records” from Maryland’s highway department.
His request opened up a legal fight that he ultimately lost. A state administrative law judge said the state was within its rights to withhold certain accident data, analyses and engineering studies, noting that Boltuck might well “widely disseminate” the information, and it could eventually find its way into the hands of someone who might sue the state for failing to fix the intersection.
But then state officials — comfortable that they did not have to provide the documents — gave Boltuck some of them anyway. With those documents, he and his neighbors found that the state had not included seven of 13 accident reports from 2004 to 2007.
“There were several accidents missing from the reports that the state had compiled to decide not to install a turning light,” he said.
In July, the Maryland General Assembly approved a bill that backers said would make the selection process for road improvements and repairs more transparent, making public a new ranking system for projects. The measure was vetoed by Gov. Larry Hogan, who said it would have the opposite effect and would politicize the process. The legislature overrode Hogan’s veto.
But the measure does not address the type of documents Boltuck was seeking — the backup documents and data that inform the selections of projects.
Many states shield this information from public disclosure.
“This really restricts the ability to hold governments accountable,” said Keith Kessler, a Seattle lawyer who has handled many accident cases and relies on Washington state’s public records law.
In many states, individual accident reports are available to the public, but the cumulative data and the rankings by the state of specific sites are usually not obtainable.
This information gap leaves drivers, school bus dispatchers, truckers, cyclists and pedestrians at a disadvantage, without information that would enable them to avoid dangerous routes. It opens the possibility that the decisions about which site gets fixed and when could be based on favoritism, not objective data.
It also forces the public to rely on third parties — such as insurance companies — that scrape state accident databases for information about individual accidents and then offer up their own lists of dangerous intersections, roads and bridges.
Without data and access to state studies such as those Boltuck sought, residents who think their community might have been overlooked cannot compare reports to decide whether those third- party sources are accurate and whether states’ decisions are meritorious or misguided.
In Bethesda, there is still no left- turn signal at Braeburn Parkway and River Road. However, after public outcry, the state said in August that it planned to install a flashing light that alerts oncoming drivers that someone ahead in the opposite lane is attempting a left turn. But by year’s end, no flashing light had been installed.