Hey, Las Vegas Sun, what caused those wrecks??

A new stretch of highway designated as Interstate 11 opened last summer near Las Vegas. It bypasses a long-standing bottleneck in Boulder City and shortens the time for a trip from Vegas to Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon.

Within the first few weeks of the opening there were three accidents claiming four lives. The Las Vegas Sun reported on these wrecks on Sept. 16 under a headline, “String of crashes on new stretch of Interstate 11 spurs concern.” The headline made me wonder if there was some serious problem with the design of the new road.

One would naturally be curious as to the cause of the wrecks. The article quotes a state transportation official as saying the crashes were the result of driver error, but nowhere in the article does the reporter (Mick Akers) tell his readers the details.

Here’s what The Sun reported:

“On Aug. 14, a two-vehicle crash left two men dead. On Aug. 28, a two-vehicle crash left two dead and three injured. On Sept. 6, a four-vehicle crash, including two semi-trucks, resulted in three injuries.”

Here’s what The Sun didn't report:

• In the first wreck, a driver made a U-turn into oncoming traffic.
• In the second wreck, a vehicle left the road and hit a car parked on the shoulder. It was 2:20 a.m. The driver whose car left the road was charged with DUI.
• In the third wreck, a tractor-trailer crashed into traffic that was backed up from an earlier wreck, at about 2 a.m.

These are salient facts that would greatly improve a reader's understanding, but The Sun didn't include them. The front page of The Sun boasts, “A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper,” referring to an award about 10 years ago. Now if an old man in his jammies can find these facts with about five minutes of Google searching, don’t you think a reporter for “A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper” could do the same? Apparently not.