Eyewitnesses?

Last week my Uncle had a minor accident. While traveling along a busy narrow street, his truck mirror clipped the mirror of a van parked along the curb. He couldn’t stop right away because of the location and the amount of traffic, so he went to the end of the street, turned around and went back. When he arrived, the van was gone. (Apparently it was someone stopped at a yard sale.)

Not wanting to let this go, he went to the Police Station and told the clerk what had happened. They said they did get a report of the incident and the investigating officer was called in to interview my Uncle. During the interview, the officer said they had several ‘eyewitnesses’ willing to testify. Depending on which report he read, they either swore that the alleged hit and run driver was driving a red or green truck. Once he heard this, my Uncle took the officer outside and showed him his white truck. All white with some thin black body molding on the sides. The officer told him that they had actually seen him coming back up the street, but they never would have stopped him. They were looking for a green or red truck. So my Uncle told him that he must be innocent since he drove a white truck (He has since paid for repairs to the mirror, by the way.)

My question here is this, how can we rely on eyewitness accounts when something like this can happen? The traveling speed on the street in question can’t be more than 15 mph. It is too narrow and the traffic was too heavy. The witnesses swearing to the color might even have been able to run alongside and gotten a license plate number. But the ‘sworn reports’ were so far off that the police could drive right by the person they were looking for and never know it.

This incident is a minor one. What about major ones where people ‘swear they saw everything?’ Minor story, but kind of scary to me.