Tell me Pierce County lawyers are kidding. Can they honestly believe that continuing to keep information secret about accidents on our roads will jeopardize funding for eliminating these hazards?
As Associated Press reported, Pierce County lawyers contend that litigation resulting from injuries on known dangerous roads will undermine the effort to collect federal funds to protect us from those poorly planned roads.
Why would that happen? In a nutshell, Washington state government suggests that it might decide to discontinue collecting highway accident data to prevent accident victims from proving that the state or county was negligent, thereby saving the government from paying settlements. Those federal funds are in jeopardy only when the county fails to report accident data. If the onus to prove negligence is on the accident victim, the state might suffer less litigation. Oddly, in this proposed scenario, the state has fewer federal funds, but in the meantime, taxpayers will pay for accident victims’ unemployment benefits and EMT/police/fire services. And taxpayers would pay for county public relations efforts in response to news reports about dangerous roads, crosswalks, etc.
In this scenario, presented in legal arguments, the government would choose to stop collecting data to prevent future litigation, but wouldn’t reduce the actual hazard. Wouldn’t that just add a new layer of negligence and create a different problem? Our elected officials don’t think so. Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire says sharing information “has spawned a kind of tort litigation against states that is enabled almost solely by this data.” She urges the state Supreme Court to uphold the state’s right to secrecy. Again, not to protect its citizens, but to protect the budget.
Car and tire corporations have learned the hard way. Americans will not stand for anyone who purposely hides information that could save lives in the interest of saving face or saving money. We won’t re-elect anyone who does that, either.
State and Pierce County lawyers propose that the right thing is to protect the taxpayer’s wallet, but not the actual taxpayer. I suspect these attorneys tele-commute.
Lake Stevens
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