The bill amends existing legislation to enhance privacy protections for individuals involved in vehicle accidents by mandating the redaction of personal identifying information and auto insurance policy numbers from vehicle accident reports before they are released to the public under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). While these sensitive details will be redacted for public access, unredacted reports will still be available to specific authorized parties, including individuals involved in the accident, their attorneys, insurance companies, and law enforcement agencies. These authorized recipients are restricted from publicly disclosing the unredacted information without written consent from all involved parties or, in the case of a deceased or incapacitated individual, their legal next of kin.

To ensure compliance with these privacy measures, the bill introduces escalating civil penalties for unauthorized disclosure of personal information, starting at $1,000 for a first offense and increasing to $5,000 for subsequent offenses. Additionally, custodians of government records are required to maintain a log of all unredacted vehicle accident report disclosures, which must be made available to the Government Records Council or Attorney General upon request for investigative purposes. Overall, the bill aims to strike a balance between transparency in government records and the protection of individual privacy rights in light of growing concerns over data breaches and identity theft.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 47:1A-1.1, 47:1A-11