this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
1070 points (93.6% liked)
Technology
60076 readers
2762 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know its super pedantic, but the word “accident” really grinds my gears in this context.
The proper terminology is “crash”.. accident infers that there is no fault or misconduct.
The official UK Police term is Road Traffic Collision, or RTC, which does not imply fault or otherwise.
What made you want to become a policeman-officer?
The mom or the sister?
Trucking companies have switched the terms in the same way, since "accident" lightens responsibility. Even a not-at-fault crash could have been preventable often times, which is what they try to emphasize.
One of the many ways trucking companies avoid liability by putting all responsibility for fuck-ups on the driver.
https://youtu.be/puK5CwThaq4?si=nsj3gOrdMN8dmn4p
This scene immediately popped into my head.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/puK5CwThaq4?si=nsj3gOrdMN8dmn4p
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
You can intentionally crash into someone which would not be an accident but if you crash into someone not on purpose, then it's an accident.
Exactly, so the use of "crash" would generally be far better for these sorts of articles.
"Accident" starts addressing intentions or expectations.
We could just add easily refer to them as "vehicular violence" but then we'd end up distorting things in another direction.
It doesn't have to be on purpose. Accident implies that something was just a freak occurrence beyond anyone's control. You can't fix accidents. You can fix crashes.
If you're driving negligently - drunk driving, not paying attention, etc then it's not an accident.
If it's due to bad road design, then it's not an accident.
Wouldn't an accident still involve "fault"
Colloquially, accidents are random events without intention or fault.
That's why there's a push to use neutral terms like "crash" that don't imply that the "accident" was just a random accidental mistake.
And fault is often a bit of a misnomer. Many crashes are the result of bad design, but the courts would never say "this pedestrian fatality here is 40% the fault of whichever insane engineer put the library parking lot across a 4-lane road from the library but refused to put a crosswalk there or implement any sort of traffic calming because that would inconvenience drivers".
While many accidents do involve fault, there are scenarios where an accident can occur without anyone being legally at fault (mechanical failure, natural disasters). It does excludes malicious intent though. in the specific context of commercial motor vehicle regulations in the US, the term "accident" is defined in the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR) under 49 CFR § 390.5
Good point, so does Accidents exclude "accidental crashes with fault"
relevant https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129682
Car caused trauma