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Comment by ok_dad | Hacker News Reader

Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead. This is a similar case. Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger. The question is still out as to whether we as humans should wield any of those three things.

Edit: let’s not get into ideological arguments about gun control, automobiles, etc here; I meant that you can’t blame an object when a human has to take an action, not get into a political battle.

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Neither the automobile nor a gun can operate without a human. You could say “bull runs amok in a market” after it was released intentionally.

So the agent is exhibiting an unknown amount of autonomy thus we can't be certain whether "running amok" carries the correct connotation.

However that phrasing is also commonly used when a person or group wreaks havoc in a seemingly unpredictable manner. So I think the appropriateness comes down to how much chaos it has created and the level of apparent confusion on the ground.

There's a difference between the driver intentionally driving into crowd, and not intentionally but possibly still recklessly (drifting and losing control, falling asleep, etc). In those cases I would probably use "car hits the crowd", at least in my language

There may be a difference in degree of the crime but the driver is still responsible in both cases and should be the primary subject of any reporting.

Let's reserve "car hits the crowd" for situations where no driver was involved like a break failure on a car parked on a slope or a self-driving car bug.

Ironically news outlets like to use the phrasing you rightfully point out as absurd. Not sure if they just do it randomly or only when they get orders to push a certain narrative.

>Car plows into Christmas market in Germany, killing at least 5 and injuring 200

It's very simply explained by this being the most succinct way of wording it. Some methods of killing have verbs that suit mentioning the attacker - shoots, stabs. Some don't. "Rammed" or "runs over" isn't as precise as mentioning that a car was used, and adding "with car" makes it more awkward than it's felt to be worth.

Compare bombs. Very typical for a bomb attack to be "bomb goes off in crowd" or similar, rare for headlines to contort themselves with "terrorist plants bomb near crowd and triggers it to explode". But nobody worries about how such a construction assigns undue agency to the bomb and acquits the bomber; it's just linguistically awkward to mention him within the confines of a newspaper headline.

Unfortunately the news commonly do put the automobile as the subject when the driver is of a class politically protected from blame. Just like with people anthropomorphizing AI, it serves to deflect blame from the real culprit.

Newspaper articles generally do say things like "a car struck pedestrians". I agree with your point though.

>Would you say, “Automobile run amok in crowd, killing 22”? I think you’d say, “Person drives car into crowd, killing 12” instead.

If the automobile was "self driving" I would.

>Also, you don’t blame a gun for killing, but the person who pulled the trigger.

Nah, I also blame guns and appreciate gun control laws.

>If the automobile was "self driving" I would.

thats the point...

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