You can argue the semantics or meaning of the word accident in this incident, but I think it is important to make the distinction that it was no accident in bringing down the system that both the university and the hospital depend upon. They consciously decided to do this. Their ignorance of the full network does not take away from the intent of the original crime. An IT staff making an update that has an unexpected and unfortunate effect of bringing down the system is an accident. It is why when someone dies during the commission of another felony crime the charge is murder for all of the original perpetrators involved. The rule of transferred intent. The others don't get off, and nobody argues it is an accident [1]. Actions and consequences.
Applying that to this incident seems barbaric. The "transferred intent" is stealing. Sure they're jerks, but don't make them out to be murderers. The fact that a woman died was an accident through and through.
The very worst case scenario they saw when they initiated their crime was that some data would be lost. The transferred intent is that the data of another organisation was going to be lost.
I guess in today's times barbaric is used a lot more freely than when I grew up. It used to mean savagely cruel, and brutal.
Transferred intent is when a perpetrator intends to harm one victim but then "unintentionally" (quotes mine to point out it is in the defined legalese rather than "accident"). Yes, you can say they meant to steal, and not intentionally kill anyone. IANAL.
If you want to put it in legal scope though, it is involuntary manslaughter. You haven't convinced me to call it an "accident" by any means.
Your argument is worthy of discussion, which is why I am continuing the discussion, but I don't think it is bias on my part or yours as far as I can tell. Yes, the general definition of "accident" seems to fit it in the manner you mean, but let me illustrate why I initially made the assertion that it was not an accident. You stated:
> Yeah, we call that an accident. Just like hitting someone with your car can be an unintended consequence of driving.
I would add to your statement above to make it fit the comparison to the actual incident a bit better:
> Yeah, we call that an accident. Just like hitting someone with your car can be an unintended consequence of driving a getaway car during a bank robbery.
I wouldn't use the word "accident" here. I would say someone "tragically" died when a criminal was driving away from the scene of a robbery. Of the 38,000 people who die in car "accidents" in the U.S. each year, if 30,000 of those were getaway cars or tied to criminal activity, and not just "accidents" I think there would be a different response to the scenario I just presented.
Accidental death benefits from the insurance industry exclude death caused by illegal activities, but I think this means by the person committing the illegal acts, so maybe not such a good example. I don't know.
If someone chokes someone, so that they can render them unconscious to rob them or arrest them, and the choked out person dies during the process, would you use the word "accident" in reporting the incident?
If this university/hospital hack was committed by completely naive hackers, they were still committing intentional harm to a business that affects the employees and others doing business with them. It doesn't take much imagination to figure that by using ransomware in this incident, you may affect people's lives negatively without the actual death that occurred. They might have to lay off a worker or two to cover the loss, not buy essential equipment for the university or hospital that year or more, etc.
I'll leave off here, and say you had a "convincing" argument from a concise dictionary definition, but I wouldn't sling that word so nonchalantly in applying it to this woman's death. Perhaps I misread the tone of your "Yeah, we call that and accident.", but who's we?
This is a dishonest comparison. A more appropriate analogy would be you were deliberately trying to run someone over with your car and you ended up hitting a pregnant woman as well. Then your defense is "I'm not a monster, of course I didn't purposely hit a pregnant woman."
Yeah, we call that an accident. Just like hitting someone with your car can be an unintended consequence of driving.