
It’s No 'Accident:' Advocates Want to Speak of Car 'Crashes' Instead - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no-accident-advocates-want-to-speak-of-car-crashes-instead.html?_r=2
======
brianvan5155
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.

~~~
nostromo
I feel like the U.S. is shifting too much to a blame culture.

For every bad or unfortunate incident, we call for blame and jail time and
sometimes even public shaming.

And then we turn around and wonder why so many behaviors are criminalized and
why so many people are in jail.

Yes, reckless driving shouldn't be ignored, but the article is arguing that
accidents almost never happen, and that almost all accidents should lead to
some sort of charges.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Is it "blame culture" when some jerk falls asleep behind the wheel,
unintentionally kill a pedestrian, and is let off the hook because he wasn't
attempting murder?

Is it "blame culture" when someone hits-and-runs a cyclist, posts on Facebook
that he hit some dumb-ass guy on a bicycle, that cyclist winds up dead, but
hey, he wasn't _actually(_ trying to kill him, and gets off the hook with a
$350 traffic fine?

This shit happens EVERY WEEK in New York City. Our cops would rather pretend
like they're on The Wire or 24 hunting down drug lords and terrarists than
doing basic traffic enforcement. They use terminology like "accidents" because
a cabbie paralyzing or murdering a child is difficult to prosecute.

Semantics count. When we say "call it a crash, not an accident," all we're
saying is, "figure out whether the person driving the car is culpable before
you let him off the hook."

~~~
im4w1l
A non-blame culture way to look at it would be to ask why people fall asleep
at the wheel and try to prevent it from happening. Can we make cars and roads
that promote alertness? Can cars detect sleeping drivers and wake them up? Can
they detect tired drivers and refuse to start? Why are people driving despite
being sleepy in the first place? Are they working two jobs to make ends meet?

I am not opposed to blame culture per se, I think problems should be solved at
the most logical level. Sometimes a systematic solution is the easiest, and
sometimes removing jerks is the easiest.

~~~
rwallace
The correct systematic solution would be to outlaw a transportation system
that fills our streets with lethal machinery. It's crazy that cars were ever
legalized in the first place; it's one of the biggest mistakes our species
ever made, and it's long past time to fix it.

In the meantime, we can at least get rid of the laws and customs that make it
legal to kill people when your weapon is a car rather than a knife or gun.

------
fossuser
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.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
The problem is that our language has evolved in a direction that “accident”
implies both “no intention” and “no fault”.

An idiot behind a wheel could be snapchatting their face into a piece of
toast, slam into someone, kill them, and have it not be intentional. When the
authorities or the media call it an accident — which is true — their voice
lets the driver off the hook.

“Crash” is both literally true _and_ leaves room for investigators to find
fault.

~~~
sologoub
Many jurisdictions have criminal penalties depending on severity of
recklessness. For example, in California in collisions that resulted in death
of someone other than the driver responsible can result in charges all the way
to vehicular homoside/murder for repeat DUI offenders. Lesser charges are
available to fit less degrees of wrecklessness. Source:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_homicide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_homicide)

While driving in LA, I see a lot of people doing stupid things in cars, but I
don't personally think turning to public shaming is the answer (mostly because
I don't think it'll work - person is already reckless and doesn't think what
he/she is doing is wrong). Human element is deeply flawed, so augmenting this
element with safety tech is a better answer. With the current sensor tech,
there really is no reason a car should be able to rearend another car! Volvo,
Audi and Infinit already sell models that have been tested at low to moderate
speeds to be able either prevent a crash or reduce it to a small tap:
[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/front-crash-
pr...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/front-crash-prevention-
tests)

Such tech ought to be required by law to be standard. No excuse that it's
still isn't.

~~~
akgerber
Shaming is ineffective. But suspension of the driving privilege should be a
more widely-used tool, as should automated traffic enforcement— especially
with regards to speeds in urban areas.

~~~
sologoub
From personal experience, the automated enforcement is tricky - speed cameras
are common in Moscow suburbs. The owner of the vehicle is cited under current
regs, which is annoying but since there is no point system like in US, it's
not as big of a problem. Imagine if your license could be suspended if someone
from your household drove your car?

You need ways to positively ID the driver, but that creates other privacy
problems...

~~~
jakobegger
in Austria most speed cameras take a picture of the car from the front, so you
can see who drove the car. (Fun fact: the cameras taking pictures from the
front were added because the German police refused to enforce speeding tickets
on Austrian highways if the driver could not be identified)

~~~
sologoub
How do they match the driver? Does it use driver license photos or some other
database to match these?

~~~
jakobegger
If you don't speed much, they don't. The owner of the registration (license
plate) gets an "anonymous ticket" and as long as you pay, they don't bother
identifying the driver.

If you don't pay, or if you drive significantly faster than allowed, the
police starts an investigation to determine the driver, which starts by
sending a form letter to the owner of the registration, asking them who drove
the car. As far as I know it's a manual process, and I'm not sure the photo is
actually used; the photo is mainly just proof in case people claim it wasn't
them.

------
dmix
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.

~~~
m0nty
> denying a basic common sense human attribute

Unfortunately, this kind of thing can end up in court where "common sense" has
even less meaning than usual. "Your honour, the police have already
categorised this as an accident, so clearly there is no case to answer." This
has happened in court in the UK, which is why the police here talk of RTCs
(road traffic collisions) rather than RTAs (accidents). "Collision" also
applies to any kind of "accident", more so than "crash".

------
icambron
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.

~~~
ryandrake
How much effort/investment has gone into trying to prevent car crashes vs. how
much effort has gone into trying to cushion and protect victims of crashes,
isolating them from the dangerous activity they are undertaking? Seat belts,
crumple zones, air bags. It's as if the auto industry has all thrown up their
hands and accepted that car crashes can't possibly be avoided and instead
focused effort on bubble wrapping and padding everything.

If anything, what they're doing is making drivers LESS cautious and less aware
that they're driving a 2000 pound killing machine down the road. Automatic
transmission, power steering, drive-by-wire, comfy seats, sound deadening
everywhere, vibration deadening everything, bluetooth, DVD LCD, climate
control, cruise control, you name it. Abstraction on top of abstraction,
distraction on top of distraction, to the point where you as a driver are so
far removed from the act of driving that you become complacent. Driving a
modern car is like sitting in your living room, and that's NOT a good thing.

The safest I've ever behaved as a driver was behind the wheel of a 1980's
manual-everything, metal dashboard deathmobile sports car. When you pulled out
on the road in that thing, and it started shaking at speed, it was in-your-
face obvious that you were taking your life into your own hands, and I
guarantee my behavior changed due to it. We could use a little more of that
these days and a little less air conditioning.

~~~
icambron
I think there's pretty good evidence those safety features have helped a lot!
People were almost twice as likely to die in a car accident in the 1980s than
today [1]. I'm not an auto crash expert -- and I admit that safer roads and
better traffic enforcement could be a portion of this -- but I'm pretty sure
the lion's share of those gains are simply more crash-tolerant cars.

> and I guarantee my behavior changed due to it

But did your behavior change enough to make up for how much more dangerous it
was? Would the median driver's in the same situation?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

------
squidfood
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.

~~~
ams6110
Yes I was also going to say I remember this mantra going around a few years
ago. And, from what I hear on most radio traffic reports, "crash" is the term
most often used.

------
kazinator
> _“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.

~~~
hudibras
But "crash" is also a perfectly good word; what's wrong with using that word
instead, especially since some people don't like the word "accident?"

~~~
kazinator
Mainly what is wrong with it is that we're then caving in to a few people who
don't like a word. "Crash" isn't a _perfectly_ good word because negligent
drivers can cause an accident without themselves crashing. That word is used
anyway, and in practice it is no more or less informative than "accident".

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

~~~
frankydp
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4)

------
orthoganol
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.

~~~
sbov
Note that fatalities can include both drivers and passengers. I'm also not
sure where you got 80M active drivers from, I know there are around 200M
licensed drivers but couldn't find any stats on active drivers.

On a yearly basis, since 2000, in the US, supposedly there have been anywhere
from 1.5 to 1.08 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled by vehicle. That
seems like a much more solid number to calculate your odds based on, but I
don't know how to offhand.

~~~
benkuykendall
Ok, let's use that 1E-8 fatalities per vehicle miles driven. If you commute 50
miles a day 250 days a year for 50 years, we get a total of 1E-8 x 50 x 250 x
50 = 0.006 fatalities, or a 0.6% probability of death.

------
intrasight
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.

~~~
intrasight
And, keeping more on topic, we say "plane crash" not "plane accident" in
common speech, and the same makes sense with cars. With airplane crashes,
you'll often have the detail given as "controlled flight into terrain". I
suggest for autonomous cars that we say "controlled drive into obstacle".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain)

"Accidents where the aircraft is out of control at the time of impact, because
of mechanical failure or pilot error, are not considered CFIT (they are known
as uncontrolled flight into terrain), nor are accidents resulting from the
deliberate action of the person at the controls, such as acts of terrorism or
suicide by pilot."

Note that Wikipedia does use the word "accident" \- because they are being
technically correct.

~~~
Animats
"Controlled flight into terrain" is a category of accident. Other categories
include "loss of control", "engine failure", "midair collision", "takeoff
accident", and "landing accident".

For highway accidents, the NTSB uses such terms as "roadway departure",
"collision with stopped vehicles", "collision of two school buses with
subsequent rollover", "motor coach run-off-road and overturn", and
"multivehicle work zone crash". All are referred to as "accidents". The NTSB
uses the term "accident" even for 9/11.

The Tesla investigation hasn't shown up in the NTSB database yet. But it will.

------
beloch
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.

~~~
mqir1anir6
Anxiety contributes to heart disease which is the most likely cause of death.
Anxiety also causes a great deal of suffering for many people. I think your
advice about driving is correct, because car accidents are a common cause of
death. But most of the things you can decide to have a neurosis about are not
such a big risk.

~~~
beloch
One nice thing about the 10000 rule is that it can help you with irrational
fears. e.g. Bears. They're only scary until you look at how astronomically
improbable it is to be killed by one. When you look at the benefits of hiking,
backpacking, etc., it really is a no-brainer to ignore your fear of bears.
Sure, learn how to avoid encounters and how to manage them if it makes you
feel better. Heck, buy bear spray if you feel you need to. Just don't avoid
the wilderness because of bears!

------
maho
> 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...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)
[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.

~~~
ams6110
My first guess would be that cars are simply safer than they've ever been.
You're more likely to survive a crash.

Driving in the US is less safe because there's almost no barrier to getting a
driver's license. Be at least 16 years old, pass a simple written test, a
vision check, and a very basic road test, and you're good to go.

~~~
toast0
Not having a driver's license is not a significant barrier to driving; it just
makes it harder to get insurance and register a vehicle, and makes any traffic
stop a big deal.

There's some amount of societal good done by having looser standards for a
license to keep more vehicles registered and more drivers fiscally
responsible[1].

[1] generally through insurance

------
WalterBright
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...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/pages/aviation_stats.aspx)

~~~
honkhonkpants
The reason those are investigated is because the airline business has taken
all reasonable precautions to prevent them. In that case it is fine to use the
word "accident" to describe an event that occurred despite the monumental
efforts of the industry.

In the case of cars it doesn't make sense because nobody is putting any kind
of organized effort into reducing the mechanized carnage. If car wrecks ever
become so rare that we thoroughly investigate each and every one of them, then
we can start assuming they are all accidents.

~~~
WalterBright
Aviation "accident" statistics include deliberate acts of destruction.

Also, once the cause is determined, it becomes an almost inevitable
progression of events, not some heisenberg quantum accidental effect.

------
sukilot
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.

------
upofadown
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.

------
jbangert
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.

~~~
PeterisP
The speed limit focus is based on the consequences of crashes - while it
doesn't do anything significant (AFAIK) in regards to _chances_ of an
accident, there is a significant link between accident speed and rate of
deaths and severe injuries.

A car driving at 70 has twice as much kinetic energy than at 50; and modern
cars are quite good at protecting people up until they can't - many of fatal
crashes would be just property damage if the impact happened, say, 20 km/h
slower; while tailgating accidents don't kill much people at all.

------
junipergreen
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.

------
kilotaras
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero)
[2]
[http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/](http://www.visionzeroinitiative.com/)

------
Angostura
I first thought about this issue when I watched Hot Fuzz
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4)

------
superuser2
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.

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

------
Perceptes
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.

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gozur88
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.

~~~
jrockway
Well, it depends on how you define intent. Clearly you define intent as a
conscious thought towards doing something. "I'm going to crash my car today.
There's a nice-looking target. Steering wheel activate! <crash>"

Others wonder how accidental it really is that you crashed your car while
composing an SMS novel on your phone. What did you think was going to happen
when you mashed the gas pedal without looking in front of you?

~~~
gozur88
It's still not intentional if you didn't, you know, intend to do it. Even if
you're drunk off your ass, texting, and trying to change your shoes at the
same time. It's still an accident if the goal was to get down the road in one
piece.

That's not the same thing as saying we shouldn't prosecute drunk or reckless
drivers.

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rando444
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.

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

~~~
bbcbasic
Crash would do in that circumstance too. Whether it is homicide will require
some investigation. Whether the robot or it's creator is culpable is a whole
other ethical problem we may need to face in the future

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raarts
> 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'.

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

~~~
dmatthewson
Exactly so. The above is clearly a PR campaign.

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neurotech1
The Navy use the term "Mishap", usually in reference to aircraft incidents
that result in damage or a total loss.

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

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

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cpeterso
Traffic safety is no accident.

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fdsaaf
Please stop trying to police language.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
If you seriously believe that the structure and way that language is expressed
doesn't have real world implications, and you are a programmer, hacker, or in
IT in an capacity, may I suggest that maybe you take a little time off and
think about the world for a while?

~~~
wpietri
Definitely. It's an even weirder thing to grumble about here, in that the
language change is the means to an end: saving lives.

If somebody were getting all riled up about tomayto versus tomahto), I'd say
that a complaint about policing language was reasonable; that really is purely
a language thing. But generally when I hear it somebody is actually opposed to
a substantive change but won't come right out and say it.

That always seems weird to me. You'd think somebody so excited about being
able to say what they want would, y'know, say what they want.

~~~
fdsaaf
A great deal of evil has been done in the name of saving lives and souls. Your
good intentions do not excuse the long history of thought policing leading to
injustice and misery.

~~~
wpietri
A great deal of evil has been done in the name of pretty much anything good,
but that doesn't mean that any of those things is bad.

If you believe that this particular request leads to injustice and misery,
feel free to make a case for it. But as far as I can see, this is asking
people to think of something in a more useful way.

------
ars
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.

~~~
mplewis
In the case of a car crash, calling it an accident implies it was
unpreventable and blameless.

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maxaf
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.

