this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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I know its super pedantic, but the word “accident” really grinds my gears in this context.
The proper terminology is “crash”.. accident infers that there is no fault or misconduct.
The official UK Police term is Road Traffic Collision, or RTC, which does not imply fault or otherwise.
What made you want to become a policeman-officer?
The mom or the sister?
Trucking companies have switched the terms in the same way, since "accident" lightens responsibility. Even a not-at-fault crash could have been preventable often times, which is what they try to emphasize.
One of the many ways trucking companies avoid liability by putting all responsibility for fuck-ups on the driver.
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You can intentionally crash into someone which would not be an accident but if you crash into someone not on purpose, then it's an accident.
Exactly, so the use of "crash" would generally be far better for these sorts of articles.
"Accident" starts addressing intentions or expectations.
We could just add easily refer to them as "vehicular violence" but then we'd end up distorting things in another direction.
It doesn't have to be on purpose. Accident implies that something was just a freak occurrence beyond anyone's control. You can't fix accidents. You can fix crashes.
If you're driving negligently - drunk driving, not paying attention, etc then it's not an accident.
If it's due to bad road design, then it's not an accident.
Wouldn't an accident still involve "fault"
While many accidents do involve fault, there are scenarios where an accident can occur without anyone being legally at fault (mechanical failure, natural disasters). It does excludes malicious intent though. in the specific context of commercial motor vehicle regulations in the US, the term "accident" is defined in the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR) under 49 CFR § 390.5
Good point, so does Accidents exclude "accidental crashes with fault"
Colloquially, accidents are random events without intention or fault.
That's why there's a push to use neutral terms like "crash" that don't imply that the "accident" was just a random accidental mistake.
And fault is often a bit of a misnomer. Many crashes are the result of bad design, but the courts would never say "this pedestrian fatality here is 40% the fault of whichever insane engineer put the library parking lot across a 4-lane road from the library but refused to put a crosswalk there or implement any sort of traffic calming because that would inconvenience drivers".
relevant https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129682
Car caused trauma