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). It specifies that unredacted reports will only be accessible to authorized parties, such as individuals involved in the accident, their attorneys, insurance companies, and law enforcement agencies. These authorized recipients are prohibited from publicly disclosing the information without written consent from all involved parties or, in cases involving deceased or incapacitated individuals, 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 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, particularly in sensitive situations like vehicle accidents.

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