Please don't call it an 'accident'...
> “Accident” tends to imply that no one is at fault — and when it’s used in the context of a traffic crash, it also can give the impression that what occurred is not that serious.
https://www.helpinginjuredpeople.com/legal-blog/its-a-collis...
The "expert" cited is a psychologist, not a linguist, and in particular a psychologist who apparently lost his father in such an accident. This is about choosing more emotional language in the hope that somehow this magically fixes a societal problem, which it won't.
When we re-frame this so that we're emphasising blaming the driver, we go back to the era when nothing was improved because well - it's just the driver's fault, so if they're alive we use retributive justice and if not the problem has solved itself. That simply does not work. We need to identify how we can break the chain because these are accidents, there is no intelligent actor purposefully causing them so such interventions can be effective.
Example: Use of road design to slow traffic => Cars and trucks move more slowly, pedestrians are less likely to be struck by traffic and less likely to die if hit. That would do nothing if this was purposeful, if there was intent, but there isn't and so European nations which use narrower roads to slow traffic see significant reductions in deaths and injuries.
Lots of causes of human accidents are systemic and repeatable, but that doesn't make them intentional. Take trips and falls for example, it's possible for a human to just get super unlucky and trip over for essentially no reason, but in most cases there are repeatable causes, we can fix those causes and reduce how often trips and falls occur, but the trips and falls were accidents, it's not helpful to pretend that's the wrong word.
You do raise an interesting point about how these behaviours are repeatable and predictable rather than random oopsies, though. I think it's more defensible to use that to emphasise that every accident a driverless car has, unless caused by a human, is a manufacturing flaw. It may not be inaccurate to say that the Waymo car had an accident where it dragged a person along underneath it, but it is much more accurate to say that Waymo cars had a manufacturing flaw where they would drag people underneath them, and an accident was caused by this flaw.
There's also a major problem with RTC reporting in general in that reporters often refer just to the vehicle, such as "car hit a wall", or "car plows through pedestrians" which depersonalises it and again makes it seem as though there's nothing we can do about these kinds of occurrences.
There's reporting guidelines here: https://www.rc-rg.com/
In terms of Orwellian control of language, you'd be better off looking at the behaviour of the automotive industry of the 1930s: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
It's also notable just how much the media industries are influenced by car manufacturers due to their high advertising spend (e.g. "stop publishing articles about active travel or we'll stop our advertising").
Reducing car use is an entirely logical goal as getting people to walk for short journeys can drastically improve the health of a nation as well as improving the air quality and drastically reducing congestion - it literally helps everyone (except for those involved with selling/fixing cars).
What specific part of the guidelines do you think are biased or misleading? The main thrust of the guidelines is to improve accurate reporting. Also, they aim to have consistent reporting so that the type of language used for different road users should be the same. I don't really see how asking for consistency is the same as being biased.
I don’t personally get that implication from the word.
Whether I drop and break my coffee mug or rear-end someone at a traffic light, it’s an accident and I’m responsible for it.
There's certain behaviour that leads to rear-ending someone - typically lack of awareness/attentiveness rather than it being a momentary loss of control. It's predictable that e.g. someone using a phone whilst driving will be far more likely to cause a RTC whereas the coffee mug dropping isn't really associated with any particular behaviour.
What I mean is that mug dropping is not really something that we can do anything about, but ensuring that drivers obey traffic laws and are attentive is definitely something that can be influenced (e.g. by police or by public messaging).
Same is true of rear-end collisions/accidents/unscheduled bumper modifications.
People are likely to say "I was late as I'd dropped my mug" and probably less likely to say "I was late as I drove into a car in front of me" rather than the more common "I was late as I was in a car accident". Note that the use of the verb (dropped/drove) carries the implication of being active in the situation whereas saying something like "my car hit the vehicle in front" or "I was in a car accident" is reducing the role of the person.
I was late because I was delayed by something not able to be planned around. That's what I'm conveying by way of my explanation. The person that I'm late to meet (likely) isn't a traffic cop, a DMV employee, my insurance adjuster, a purveyor of replacement coffee mugs, nor an analyst for NHTSA, so they don't care in the least whose fault it was.
I'm not hiding details relevant to the listener in either the coffee or the car mishap.
That's kind of a straw man argument though.
If you instead compare "I was in a car accident" with "I was in a mug dropping accident", you can see how bizarre it can be to use the passive version with a non-car incident. However, comparing "I drove into another car" with "I dropped a mug" and you can see that the active voice works better. (Possibly "I accidentally dropped a mug" could be used, but that's adding irrelevant information as it would be unusual for someone to purposefully drop a mug).
The problem is that our society has over-embraced the car and has absorbed the NACC's use of language to de-personalise road traffic collisions on the car side of things.
It's a sign of motornormativity that we use different language for road traffic collisions as they have become so commonplace that they rarely even make the news. Everyone knows what a "car crash" is, but a "coffee mug crash" is not in common usage.
People like to take credit for their accomplishments and hide their blunders.
Perhaps there should be a change for driverless cars but I never thought accident implies no fault, I don't believe courts think of it as no fault either. Accident to me implies that the event was not intended regardless of fault. Thats why usually you will see things like no-fault accident or at-fault accident.