Last Friday, a car careened down Route 140 in Belmont with such speed that it took out two utility poles and sent its engine flying onto a nearby lawn during a crash.
The Belmont Police Department said the driver of the car, a woman in her 40s, was thrown from the vehicle and flown by helicopter to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Police estimated the car was traveling 80-90 miles per hour at the time of the crash.
The department spared almost no details in describing the crash except one critical fact: the driver’s name, a common piece of public information given out after accidents. And the Belmont department isn’t alone.
“The current snafu at the state level with police disclosing driver’s information would preclude me from stating her name,” Belmont Lt. Rich Mann said in an email.
Confusion over who can release accident reports to insurance companies has led some Granite State police departments to stop the public release of all information about accidents. Meanwhile, other departments continue to release public information like drivers’ names, ages and addresses, as they always have.
In the Concord area, at least five departments have stopped giving out accident information until the Legislature clarifies what kind of information police departments are allowed to give out under RSA 260:14, known as the Driver Privacy Act.
The root of the issue is an opinion from the state attorney general’s office cautioning local police departments that state law didn’t give them authority to release accident reports to involved parties or insurance companies. Instead, requests for accident reports would have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get information, the AG concluded.
Yet many police departments stopped giving out all car crash information as soon as the attorney general’s opinion came down, despite the Driver Privacy Act stating that accident reports are public record covered by the right-to-know law and should be available for public inspection.
“The accident report, the technical accident reconstruction report, any repair estimate, or any similar document that constitutes a motor vehicle record that is created or received as a result of any accident or collision involving a vehicle owned or leased by the state, a county, a city, a town, or a local public entity shall be a governmental record subject to inspection and disclosure in accordance with RSA 91-A except when inspection or disclosure would risk exposure of undercover law enforcement activity,” the law states.
An amendment to the Driver Privacy Act clarifying what police departments are allowed to release was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. The amendment, if approved, would allow departments to release accident reports for a fee, and also reverses a clause that lets drivers opt out of having their records shared.
Policy makers seem divided on what the current law covers. Sen. David Watters, who sponsored the HB 437 amendment, said it was likely the amendment would be approved. Until then, police will have to continue to direct those involved in crashes to the DMV for information.
The issue of what information can be released publicly by police, he said, is not related to the bill.
“That’s not affected by this,” he said. “It’s a different issue.”
But David Hilts, an attorney with the Department of Safety, said it’s unclear under the Driver Privacy Act whether that’s allowed.
“There’s confusion between the guidance the department has been giving towns and what the statute says,” Hilts said. “The issue of what can be given to media is the same kind of thing, where the guidance the department has been giving out and what the law says aren’t in sync.”
Most, like Weare police Chief Sean Kelly, are in favor of the amendment, but want to wait to see what happens with the Legislature before taking any chances for fear of legal repercussions.
“That’s certainly something the police don’t want to be involved in,” Kelly said.
Concord, Canterbury, Dunbarton and Warner police chiefs also said they are no longer giving out crash information.
Pat Sullivan, executive director for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, said under the AG’s interpretation of the law, giving out crash information could be a misdemeanor, and charging for an accident report could be a felony. He said several chiefs support the amendment because it allows them to better serve the public and get information in a timely manner.
Other police departments in the Concord area, like Bow, Boscawen, and Pittsfield, continue to give out car crash information publicly, but have stopped giving out actual accident reports.
“Something like that involves the community,” Bow police Chief Margaret Lougee said. “People are going to want to know why traffic was held up, what’s going on in town. But they’re not getting that actual report.”
(Ella Nilsen contributed to this report. Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)