hunterbishop.com

The Police Department finally has information about Saturday's fatal crash on Route 130 at Post Office Road posted on its Web site. But there are still no names of anyone involved.

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Little evidence remained of Saturday's fatal crash on Sunday except some bits of debris by the road, a dark splotch where one of the vehicles came to rest, and creepy spray-painted markings drawn by police on the asphalt.

This kind of incomplete information has irked me for years. I even filed a complaint with the state Office of Information Practices sometime in the mid-'90s about the Police Department's policy of withholding names of fatal crash victims until notification of a victim's next-of-kin but the OIP inexplicably never followed up despite my frequent inquiries, which became an annual ritual until eventually I let it drop still not knowing why the agency wouldn't issue a ruling on the policy, or lack of a policy, regarding the release of identifying information in the wake of fatal crashes.

What I really don't understand is why partial identifying information is released. In Saturday's example, a 24-year old Hilo woman who was driving a Mazda van is dead. She had a 30-year old male passenger in the van. The van was struck by a 19-year old Pahoa man driving a Honda who is now in critical condition, and a 17-year old Pahoa girl driving an Accura struck the dead woman after she was ejected from the van. A gruesome, tragic event all around any way you look at it.

Now imagine how many people might know a woman or two in her early to mid-20s from Hilo who drives a Mazda van, or perhaps a 19-year old man from Pahoa who drives a Honda, or a 17-year old Pahoa girl who drives an Accura. Imagine the panic and anxiety the release of this news must create unnecessarily among a larger number of people than if the specific identities of these people were released. Understandably if the police can't determine the identity of a victim for some reason then they can't release it. But if they know as much as what they reported then how can they not know whom they are talking about?

Police claim the right to withhold the names of dead victims pending notification of next-of-kin but they are not governed by any formal policies regarding the practice. Although I cringe at encouraging the police by implication to withhold any information, I really wonder what logic there is in releasing only partial identifying information?

And in this case, like many others, what justification is there for withholding the name of the 19-year old Pahoa man who apparently was arrested and released due to the extent of his injuries?  Persons arrested are a matter of public record and he survived the crash -- so far, anyway. And why provide only partial identifies of the others involved in the crash who survived yet withhold their names?

The whole practice has always seemed rather odd to me.

A final thought. We all want safer roads in Puna and decry the terrible traffic statistics that make our roads and intersections some of the most dangerous in the state, yet this incident suggests there is really little that can be done, no matter how well-designed the roads might be, to combat the misery and havoc that can be caused by just one drunken idiot behind the wheel of a fast-moving car.