The North Carolina DOT sends out routine alerts to drivers about accidents and road work using email and Twitter messages.
On Wednesday, the NCDOT sent out an alert which reads: “A High severity incident has been Added for I-40 Eastbound in Wake County in Raleigh,” before going on to list the incident as “Vehicle Accident: Women Drivers, Rain, Obama Care.”
The message then advised drivers: “Stay Home.”
WTKR NewsChannel 3 reached out to the NCDOT officials who said the erroneous message occurred due to a botched test of the system. According to the transportation officials, the systems were being analyzed at the time of the incident and messages were only supposed to be sent internally. The IT contractor reportedly did not follow protocol, and the alerts were sent to the public mistakenly.
“The individual violated procedures by failing to turn off the external feed while testing and for the inappropriate test message content. The contractor was let go immediately for this action,” DOT officials said in a statement.
–Benjamin Fearnow @Bfearnow21
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