Public access to state crash data is a safety issue | Opinion

By: Jamie Pahigian and Dylan Giles, May 23, 2025

The Providence Streets Coalition in 2023 developed a crash map visualizing incidents of people hit by cars in the city, using data from the Providence Police Department. 

We learned that while crash data held by local police departments is public under Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act (APRA), the full statewide data set is not.

The state Department of Transportation holds the only compiled record of statewide crash data, and treats it as privileged, using a convoluted legal argument endorsed by the attorney general. They claim they must restrict access to avoid being sued for failing to mitigate known hazards.