Every published accident record is compiled from public sources and passes an editorial review workflow before it appears. Automation helps us organize, extract and draft — but it does not decide what is true. Factual claims are tied to identified sources and reviewed by a person, and anything we cannot verify stays marked as unknown rather than guessed.
Source selection
We start from public sources and prefer primary, official ones — law-enforcement, transportation and other government agencies — supplemented by established, reputable reporting. Our Sources page describes this hierarchy in more detail.
Fact verification
Before a record can advance, its key facts are checked against its sources. A record moves from initial intake to a verified state only when its required facts are supported. Verification is where a claim is tied to the source that backs it.
Unknown information stays unknown
When a detail is not established by a source, we do not fill it in. An unknown injury status, for example, is recorded as unknown — not as “none.” Absence of a detail is never treated as evidence about it.
Reconciling multiple sources
When sources describe an incident differently, we reconcile them during review. A single authoritative primary source can be sufficient; an unresolved contradiction between sources holds a record back from publication until it is resolved.
Editorial review
Automation can prepare a record up to the point of verification, but it cannot publish. Moving a record beyond verification — into editorial review and toward publication — requires a person. Publication itself requires an explicit, human authorization step.
Sensitive incidents
Incidents involving a fatality or other sensitive circumstances are routed to an enhanced review with heightened care, rather than the standard path. Sensitivity increases scrutiny; it never lowers our standards or changes how a record is treated commercially.
Updates
Accident information can change as more becomes known. When it does, we update the record and show an updated date so readers can see it has changed.
Corrections
If information is inaccurate, we correct it. Anyone can report an error. We do not change public accident facts based on an anonymous submission alone — a correction is reviewed and verified before the canonical record is updated.
Removal and suppression
Some records should not be published, or should be taken down. Genuine integrity problems, privacy concerns, or a lack of sufficiently reliable sourcing can keep a record from publication or lead to its removal. These decisions are made through the same editorial review, not automatically.
Automation & AI
Technology assists our editorial process — organizing information, extracting details from sources, drafting summaries and moving records through the workflow. It does not manufacture facts. Every published factual claim is tied to an identified source and passes the applicable review before it goes live. We do not claim that every page is written by hand, and we do not present automated assistance as independent reporting.