this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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A friendly reminder that road safety advocates recommend against the use of the word "accident" to describe car crashes, because it downplays the fact that many crashes are preventable, either by better safe road design or by the drivers being more responsible with with 2 tonne machinery they are operating.
Relevant clip from Hot Fuzz
First thing that came to mind, honestly thought it was the quote at first.
I've actually never seen the movie. I just know that it's a widespread view among people who focus on road safety.
Most news articles I can find dealing with this issue, like this one seem to focus mostly on the idea that one driver may be mostly at fault. Which is true and definitely part of the equation, but personally I'm even more focused on the ways in which the road design itself may have been a contributing factor. When you have high speed roads that also have a large number of driveways and side streets (i.e., a "stroad"), higher numbers of crashes are inevitable, and can be avoided by better design. Same with when you create bike lanes with no separation, or separated but giving cars high speed ways to turn across them at intersections. The design of that street is a significant contributing factor, and calling crashes an "accident" lets the designers and the politicians who signed off on it off the hook.
No, it doesn't. Accidents are just things that weren't intended to happen
If calling something an accident let people off the hook for their responsibility in the situation then people wouldn't go to jail for car accudents
It’s not about the dictionary definition of the term. It’s about the subconscious effect your choice of language has on how people think about things. When you call something an accident it gives people the signal that there was nothing that could have been done, and so nothing does get done. There’s no pressure on politicians and engineers in most of the anglosphere to do any of the things that would actually improve road safety. Indeed, a lot of the time when they do try to make our roads safer, you see fearmongering and NIMBY opposition against the idea.
Changing the language is one small step in helping to make our roads safer by making it clearer that making them safer is something we need to be concentrating on.
You are clearly mixing up the phrase "an act of God" with "accident"
The former implies nothing could be done and is said after accidents, but the latter is what we're discussing and it does not imply that at all
An insanely popular saying is that "regulations are written in blood" after all
Go back and reread the comment that you just replied to. Because nothing at here is even remotely related to it.
The only way it would affect "how people think about things" is if people don't understand what "accident" means. Which is what happens when people like yourself intentionally spread that sort of disinformation.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Relevant clip from Hot Fuzz
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If it isn't intentional then isn't it by definition an accident?
If I break my leg while mountainbiking it seems a bit unreasonable to claim that it wasn't an accident because mountainbiking is an extreme sport and this could've been avoided if I was knitting instead.
I'm speeding through a school zone at 60km/h.... I didnt INTEND to kill anyone, but i didnt see the crosswalk and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians.
This is not an accident. Entirely preventable. Intent doesnt matter
The vast majority of car collisions are entirely avoidable.
It's still an accident. Just look up the definition. I'd wager to say most accidents are entirely preventable as well, but that's not what determines whether something was an accident
This is quite literally the opposite of the truth. You should consult a dictionary.
E: if any downvoters want to point me to a definition from a legitimate source that says "accident" means "not preventable" and doesn't mention intent, I will delete this comment in shame.
Otherwise 🖕
It's partly about it being preventable, but mostly about it being expected.
The expected outcome of drunk driving or speeding through crosswalks is hitting someone. It's preventable by not driving drunk or not speeding.
A careful driver in the Netherlands killing a cyclist in a city center on a 20mph road is unexpected and fairly surprising - that would be a true accident. A drunk driver hitting someone on an American stroad is depressingly normal. It's hard to call it an accident.
In aviation, an intentional accident is still an accident. A suicidal pilot can deliberately crash an airplane, and it's still considered an accident.
Which "road safety advocates" are those?
"Accident" simply means it was not intentional and has absolutely nothing to do with preventability.
Yeah, that'll fix it!