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Oct 27, 2009 9:58 pm US/Central
Texas Considering Changing Accident Report Forms
Contributions by Melissa Newton
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 NEWS/AP) ―
The State of Texas is considering changes that would help prevent those pesky ambulance chasers from calling you after a car wreck.
The change request comes amid concerns over personal privacy.
The Texas Transportation Commission will meet with law enforcement officials on Thursday in Fort Worth to discuss changing the current form used to report a car accident.
The form - which is used by law enforcement agencies statewide - requires officers to get phone numbers from everyone involved in a crash. State officials now want to do away with that requirement.
"The need for and uses of the phone number do not outweigh the privacy concerns that the collection, storage, and release of the phone number creates," Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) staff said in its recommendation to the commission. The commission oversees TxDOT.
Click here to see the current accident report form.
Officials say they can better protect a person's privacy by leaving phone numbers off the report.
Personal injury attorney, Mark Anderson agrees, and supports changing the form. "I think people ought to be left to their own decisions," said Anderson. "If they want to find a doctor or lawyer, they can find it like everybody else."
Anderson says there are businesses that buy accident reports and then call the people involved to offer medical services or other assistance.
It's a situation Vanessa Martinez knows all too well. Martinez recalled what happened after her accident. "I got a call on my cell phone and she's like 'Hi, my name is so and so and we're a chiropractor. We got a report you were injured in a car wreck, we've got lawyers on site, and this and that'."
Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said by e-mail that his agency is "confident the concerns we have previously expressed regarding the contents of the form can be adequately addressed in other ways."
An investigating officer can still put a phone number into the narrative portion of the report or into separate notes, said TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott.
Mark Hanna of the Texas Committee on Insurance Fraud and the Insurance Council of Texas, which represents hundreds of insurance companies, called the proposal "a monumental step in bringing telephone solicitation of crash victims to a screeching halt. The recommendation allows Texas transportation commissioners to go with their gut feeling that no one wants this type of solicitation."
If the commission approves the changes the revised form will be used starting January 1, 2010.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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