It’s No 'Accident:' Advocates Want to Speak of Car 'Crashes' Instead

I'm a supporter of a large transportation advocacy group that strongly believes in this shift in terminology. I believe in it personally, too.

Anyone who spends some time observing the news in New York - a city with a fairly low (relative) car ownership rate - would immediately notice how even the most shocking, violent, absurd automobile collisions are not just referred to as "accidents" but referred to as distinct forces of nature apart from their drivers. It's always the machine that did the colliding, the maiming and the killing... there is never any agency or responsibility given to the driver. (It's as if these cars just decided themselves to jump the curb, or race into oncoming traffic!) Flip it to a bicyclist or motorcyclist who caused a collision, and you'll see the language very precisely target the user, not the device.

Sometimes a collision IS just an accident. But not all collisions are accidents.

It's really important that policy and public perception change to dismiss the exceptions in behavior and risk-taking that we assign to most drivers who aren't drunk. If a driver is caught clearly speeding, turning through occupied crosswalks, or coming out of an assigned lane in an uncontrolled fashion, and if the result is (almost predictably) a collision, it must be stated that the driver chose to violate traffic laws & take harmful risks, which is no accident at all. The converse of this is that a driver who doesn't take these risks may get into accidental collisions, but they won't be of the sort where the car ends upside down very far from the roadway in a 25mph speed limit area.

The language 'accident' doesn't mean nobody is at fault - it just means that the crash wasn't intentional.

Since most of the time someone isn't slamming into somebody on purpose this argument to say crash instead always struck me as wrong in addition to being frivolous. If you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct.

I really dislike this trend on putting high importance on specific words usage as a means of confronting an issue. This is hardly low hanging fruit category yet it's given so much attention on social media. The primary reasons that I believe this is wrongheaded:

a) People understand the context of the word. This whole campaign is predicated on people not being able to understand context when words are used, which is denying a basic common sense human attribute.

Virginia Department of Transportation is right:

> The officials at the Virginia Department of Transportation that they stop using “accident,” he received a note saying that drivers are familiar and comfortable with the word. Virginia officials also wrote that drivers might not consider a minor incident to be a “crash,” and so the change could be confusing

b) As the above quote also points out, that by obsessing over specific meanings of words then words that currently have multiple degrees of meaning depending on context are then recategorized to just mean one specific thing. Then you potentially lose something as a result and have to find even more words to fill the void. So we have to spend even more time obsessing over which words we use, when everyone already understood what was meant in the first place.

c) It's almost always the case that time would be better spent on so many other things. It's just easier to sit at home and complain at peoples use of language then it is to teach people to be better drivers.

It feels good to tell someone they have been doing x wrong. It makes good headlines because it's something we all can relate to. It's surprising. It's a simple thing to add to a checklist of things to regulate/control in organizations. This is why I think it's such a popular strategy that people take. Sadly it's not a very useful one.

Perhaps we accept car crashes as a generalized, unspecific life hazard because our lives require us to drive constantly? It's simply too mentally burdensome to do something all of the time and also frame it as a life-threatening activity. I don't know the research on this kind of carefulness fatigue, but I strongly suspect that the more people do something dangerous, the more they consider the associated hazards to be outside their control.

So what I'm wondering is whether this kind of blame allocation really helps anyone. It's not that dissimilar to the conversation that crops here every once in a while about who should take personal responsibility when a critical security flaw is found in some widely used piece of software. We don't typically say "whelp, that's dangerous, you'd better focus really hard all of the time!" because we know that doesn't really work. Instead we say "how can we add tooling and processes to make these inevitable mistakes less likely?" Or even better, "how can we avoid doing these mistake-prone things altogether?"

Obviously, we do that with cars too, but we could do a whole lot more things that strike me, off-the-cuff, as much more likely to have an impact on reducing accidents (that's the point, right? We're not just trying shift the blame back to the drivers for some abstract sense of justice, are we?). For example:

1. More walkable

2. Add public transportation

3. Reduce speed limits

4. Autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles

5. Congestion taxes

I'm sure the impact of these different things on traffic fatalities have been studied and I'd be curious of the results. But I'd have to be convinced that "no, no, we just need people to think of their driving as their responsibility" is top-priority option.

Surprised this is new/current; in drivers ed in the 80s, our instructor told us "they're collisions, not accidents." Thought this was a common thing for driving instructors to say.

> “When you use the word ‘accident,’ it’s like, ‘God made it happen,’ ...

I do not agree; this is just a bullshit word semantics game, a game which ends as soon as we crack open an authoritative dictionary.

"Accident" has a nuance of referring to a chance event, but that clearly doesn't apply in the context of an auto wreck; only a moron would insist that "accident" in "car accident" is being used with the same nuance as "cosmic accident".

The sense of "accident" used in "car accident" unmistakably refers to the lack of intent (in a situation where human intent could conceivably exist).

It has no sense whatsoever of absolving anyone of responsibility.

If someone does something by "accident", that in no way precludes the root cause being that they are a klutz, moron or reckless goon who could have prevented that from happening.

It's a perfectly good word that we can keep using, thank you very much.

This literally reminds me of a quote from Hot Fuzz. Alas I cannot find it on YouTube.

If you look at some back-of-envelope stats over a lifetime of driving, your probability of getting killed out there is probably bigger than you expect: Let's say 50 years, 80M active drivers in US/ year, 40k fatalities/ year, the probability of going every year without dying on the road --> (1-(40k/80M))^50 --> puts your chance of death close to 3%. Lots of assumptions clearly glossed over, but would you sign up for something where there's, quite possibly, a 3% chance you get killed? Or a 12% chance of a life-altering injury (assuming 5x frequency of fatality)? It would be better if our civilization, one era, designed itself to do away with driving altogether.

If I had a daughter (which I do) who was conceived while using birth control (which she was), I would not refer to her as an "accident". While technically correct, the word carries too much unintended meaning in the ears of the listener.

Ever have a good conversation with a passenger and miss your turn? You were distracted.

Where I live, there are distracted driving laws and you can be fined for holding or looking at a cell-phone while driving, but having the hardware for taking hands-free phone-calls is perfectly fine. I don't have that kind of hardware in my car. I don't answer my phone while driving, although I do pull over and answer it if I'm expecting an important call.

I don't even listen to the wrong kind of music when driving. I love everything from classical to death metal, but I've observed I drive more aggressively when listening to certain genres, so I avoid them in the car. I find that the right kind of music allows me to avoid day-dreaming and keep my attention where it needs to be.

I've never been in an accident and I've avoided a fair few that would have been the fault of other drivers, but all of this is anecdotal evidence. However, I subscribe to the 1 in 10000 rule. Say you are camping and pitch your tent near a large but relatively short-lived species of tree. The odds of that tree falling on you while you sleep are, perhaps, as high as 1 in 10000. If you camp by such a tree once in your life, that's nothing to be concerned about. If you do it once a year, it's still pretty safe. If you happen to live out of your tent and are near such trees year-round, odds are you'll be crushed by a tree before anything else kills you. In that case, you might want to choose your campsites more carefully.

Examine what you do in your daily routine and look for the things that have a 1 in 10000 chance of killing you but don't really confer any benefits. If you're doing it daily, you really need better odds or a better payoff. I'll happily strap my feet to a board and huck myself off of icy cliffs, but that's because I (perhaps illogically) feel it's worth it, plus I don't do it every day.

> Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers.

The whole premise of the article seems wrong. According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... [1] the rate of traffic fatalities has declined markedly in the last years. It has declined per inhabitants, it has declined per vehicle miles traveled, and it has even declined absolutely! In the last 10 years, it went from 42000 deaths per year to 32000 deaths per year. This is an incredible success! Driving in the U.S. remains significantly more dangerous than in other first world countries (compare Europe, or even Germany, where there is no speedlimit on most sections of the Autobahn). But the gap is fortunately closing.

It would be fascinating to read about how the increased safety was achieved.

[1] The wikipedia article does not contain information on the year 2015. The NYT article uses the increase from 2014-2015 as basis for the claim that roadway fatalities are soaring.

Airline accidents are still called accidents, but it doesn't stop investigating each and every one to determine the cause and possible corrective action.

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/pages/aviation_stats...

I don't know who decided that accidents can't mean negligence, or how this movement claims in one breath that "accidents" was used to blame the victims in the early industrial age and in the next breath that "accidents" is used to excuse bad driving.

We can attack social problems without resorting to the euphemism treadmill.

It is important to understand that this is an attack on car culture. Car culture can not exist in the present form if sober drivers are made strictly responsible for the results of their poor driving. A requirement for good attentive driving reduces the value of the car. Our society depends on that value ... a lot.

Now that cars are generally considered a bad idea (at least in the cities) we are probably going to have to go a lot further than just changing a term (but we should still do that). We are going to have to change our entire culture. It will be very difficult. Eventually the law will catch up with culture and driving will be harder than it used to be. Then there will likely be a lot less of it done and traffic will no longer be the most dangerous thing in our lives.

One approach to reducing vehicle collisions that wasnt mentioned much in the discussion so far are road rules and design.

It is unrealistic to expect perfect responses from human drivers, or even compliance with rules. Also, human attention is severely limited (there are only so many things a human can keep track of, especially for extended periods of time). In other countries(e.g. Europe, which as mentioned further down had a more severe drop in traffic fatalities), traffic rules are often very different. For example, right turning on a red light (which can lead to collosions, hit pedestrians, Etc.) and the rather confusing right of way situation (there is no general rule for right of way, stop signs are in the order in which people arrive -- which is hard to figure out for people. Right before left or yield signage doesn't require looking at every other lane, but allows the situation to be resolved statically). There are also cleverer incentives, such as dynamically times traffic lights that give you a 'green wave' if you're going the speed limit -- so people are conditioned to drive at normal speeds. Many traffic lights here even in well off cities seem to be completely unsynchronized(or they all turn green at the same time) training drivers to speed through.

Similarly, being originally from Germany (which has no speed limits in large parts of the highway network, and higher speed limits in other places), passing on the right (which means you have to be aware of twice as many lanes which could cut into yours) and the focus on enforcing speed limits and not following distance seems odd. 60 vs 70 or perhaps even 80 isn't going to make that much difference when avoiding a crash, but having half a second vs two or three seconds to react is substantial. I have heard many anecdotes of people getting expensive speeding tickets for going 80, not one for tailgating.

At the end of the day, there will be collisions, and there will also always be a human factor in them, however no matter how draconian we make the penalties or how much we shift blame (or even not assign it), people will still drive, and we should spend some time thinking about how to make realistic driving conditions safe.

The word "accident" is really indicative of the culture. Words shape how we think about things. As someone who's lived and cycled in both the US and Western Europe, I can say that the level of personal responsibility W. European drivers seemed to feel for not killing me was much higher. US drivers will zip past me at high speeds with a foot of clearance. It makes you feel like they think hitting you would be similar running over a squirrel. Of course most drivers who hit cyclists feel absolutely distraught after it happens--they're not monsters. But it baffles me how many Americans seemed surprised that could happen until it does.

Surprised noone mentioned Vision Zero.

Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997 [1]

In every situation a person might fail - the road system should not. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero [2] http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/

I first thought about this issue when I watched Hot Fuzz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4

I strongly suspect the next frontier of driving safety is sleep.

We already have inclinations that insufficient sleep produces a mental state analogous to intoxication. However, we don't seem to recognize that someone going home after a 24-hour hospital shift, or an on-call worker who caught a production issue last night, or a new parent, or just one or the majority of adults who don't have healthy sleep patterns, is making a dangerously irresponsible gamble with other people's lives in exactly the same way as someone who downed a couple of beers.

In firearms safety education, we pretty much replaced "accidental discharge" with "negligent discharge" for the same reasons; I think it's been effective.

I'm very in favor of this effort. The language we use has a way of reinforcing our cultural values, sometimes in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

This isn't new. When I took driver's training decades ago they stressed the use of the word "collision" over "accident".

It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now. If the collision isn't intentional it's an accident, no matter how crappy your driving is. Unless, of course, it's intentional, something that is bound to be a pretty rare occurrence.

What's interesting to me is that this topic has never come up in the nordic countries, and I know for certain that in Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden the words that are used for this all translate directly to 'accident'

I can't help but wonder if this was a phrase that was borrowed and then translated, but regardless, I think we need to re-think our choice of words as well.

No doubt folks will want to start calling fatalities involving self driving cars as 'second degree robotic homicide' too.

> Mr. Larason counters that accident is simply the wrong word. “I’m betting it’s one of the most commonly used words that is used inappropriately,” he said.

Right behind 'inappropriate'.

A delicious media campaign to promulgate and evangelize that we should acquiesce to cars that tell us where to go by driving themselves.

The Navy use the term "Mishap", usually in reference to aircraft incidents that result in damage or a total loss.

How is it in other languages? In German there is only "Unfall" for both crash and accident...

I dislike both terms. I prefer the term collision. It is more consistent with physics.

Traffic safety is no accident.

Please stop trying to police language.

So when I stub my toe against a wall, can I call that an accident, or is that a toe crash?

An accident doesn't mean it was unpreventable. It just means it was not intended.

I teach my daughter that there is no such thing as an accident. The word "accident" is one of those words that we as a family refuse to use. Instead we examine the reasons why certain things happen. There is always a root cause that points to premeditated intent or negligence. Understanding this is crucial to having a good grasp of how the world works. Intentionally denying oneself such understanding is voluntary ignorance on a scale that's difficult to imagine and impossible to justify.