in the UK, the term RTA (meaning road traffic accident) was used by the police to describe a car crash in their reports. this has now largely been superseded by RTI or road traffic incident [0] in order to better convey the idea that these situations are often not simply blameless accidents, and there can be a wide variety of different reasons for their causes or precursors.

i have also seen RTC or road traffic collision used - however, this seems inaccurate when describing, say, a vehicle skidding or sliding out of control on the road but stopping without actually hitting anything, thus startling a pedestrian who then reacts by steppng backwards and falling off a bridge?

0. https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/key-a...