A fatal wreck took place on Thursday between a Lowe's delivery truck and a silver Toyota Camry across from Providence Place on Thomas Langston Road. The driver of the Camry diec and the driver of the Lowe's truck sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
A fatal wreck took place on Thursday between a Lowe's delivery truck and a silver Toyota Camry across from Providence Place on Thomas Langston Road. The driver of the Camry diec and the driver of the Lowe's truck sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
Motor vehicle crashes killed an estimated 22 people on Pitt County roads last year. We can’t determine the number for certain because the state Department of Motor Vehicles refuses to follow the law.
The DMV is the custodian of hundreds of crash reports compiled annually by the State Highway Patrol. Reporters with The Daily Reflector used to stop by the patrol office when it was at 10th and Fifth streets on a regular basis to review the reports and talk to troopers and staff members.
Several years ago those reports moved into a database accessible through a portal on the patrol’s website. The portal worked well at first, but the lag between crashes and the time reports were posted grew. Last year, the patrol and DMV placed strict limitations on the portal, ending the public’s free and easy access.
The DMV in December even denied direct written and verbal requests by The Daily Reflector to provide reports about specific fatalities. This violates state public records law, specifically General Statute 132.
The law says public records and public information compiled by government agencies are the property of the people. Section 132-1.4 deals specifically with law enforcement investigations.
It says the time, date, location and nature of a violation or apparent violation of the law reported to law enforcement is public record. It goes on to outline specifics that must be released, including the name, sex, age, address, employment, and alleged violation of law of a person arrested, charged or indicted.
DMV-349 forms, public records known as crash reports, contain all the applicable information. The DMV possesses all the forms completed by the Highway Patrol and all other law enforcement agencies across the state. A spokesman told The Daily Reflector the department could only provide a barebones list of fatal wrecks that occurred in the county in 2022.
The list requested by the newspaper in late November provided scant information on 20 wrecks it said were fatal, and at least some of the information turned out to be wrong.
The Reflector cross-referenced the list with known wrecks — incidents the paper and television stations had reported on throughout the year. The Greenville Police Department, in accordance with public records law, also provided DMV-349s for fatal wrecks it investigated in the city last year.
Comparing available information to data on the list, the Reflector determined two of the wrecks that DMV said occurred in Greenville in fact were not fatal. Upon questioning, officials were able to determine a coding error resulted in the mistake.
It makes us wonder what other errors the list contains. Based on the location of the wrecks, at least nine were investigated by troopers. DMV certainly could help clear up questions by providing full crash reports for each incident as required by law.
The Reflector also was able to find information on four more fatal wrecks not included on the DMV list. The DMV only had information through September due to that lag in reporting time. That was never a problem when reporters could view reports in person during a visit to the patrol barracks.
One of the four wrecks occurred in January. Perhaps it wasn’t on the list because it occurred in a Food Lion parking lot. Three occurred between October and December. We wonder if there were more.
We should not have to guess about any of it.
Safety on our roadways is a matter paramount to the public interest, and the public has a right to know the details of not just fatal wrecks but any wreck that occurs.
Right now the DMV has the public driving in the dark. It’s time for the state agency to turn on the headlights.
