[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.

[akgerber]

Blame and jail time are essentially never applied, even in egregious cases, at least in New York City. Families have to fight for DAs to charge even unlicensed drivers that end up on the sidewalk: http://abc7ny.com/news/exclusive-family-outraged-after-drive...

Beyond that, a lifetime driving ban is nearly impossible to impose in this country even though it would be an appropriate punishment for repeat dangerous drivers. Driving, despite being a privilege, is often treated as a right. A man who ran down and killed a little girl holding hands with her grandma in the crosswalk with the light (the police initially blamed the child on the word of the driver, and the DA dismissed the crash as an 'accident') only ended up with a driving ban due to a civil suit: http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/10/29/civil-suit-compels-man...

We clearly shouldn't blame, and especially shouldn't jail, people for every crash— but the current driving and policing culture in this country is profoundly far from that standard. Redesigning roadways so safe behavior is the default is a far better first step, but an abusive driver can figure out ways to make the best-designed piece of infrastructure dangerous.

[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.

[CalRobert]

Sounds like "pointing out a failure to meet one's responsibilities" is just blame in your book. Am I right?

[pyrale]

> They use terminology like "accidents" because [...] murdering a child is difficult to prosecute.

> murder (n) : the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another

Apparently, you are also into redefining words in a way that suits you. What next, they're having a war on pedestrians ? We're letting drivers commit genocide ?

[mturmon]

Depending on the circumstances, second-degree murder (not manslaughter) might be the appropriate charge in the case the commenter raised.

For (much) more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_(United_States_law)#Deg...

But we're just hopping on a particular word choice. The larger point is that a fine is not the right punishment.

[CalRobert]

When you consider the alignment of cultural, personal, and regulatory forces against pedestrian safety, the former would not be inaccurate.

[eeZah7Ux]

> Is it "blame culture" when some jerk

Right there.

[bww]

> the article is arguing that accidents almost never happen

The article is citing a specific statistic claiming that 94% of crashes are the result of some sort of risky behavior. If that's the case then those people fail to appreciate the gravity of their behavior and maybe our society, for everyone's sake, should make more of an effort to impress that upon them.

Choosing to use an accurate and neutral term like "crash" as opposed to an implicitly exonerating term like "accident" seems like a pretty modest step in that direction.

[Dylan16807]

The actual statistic[1] says that the critical reason for the crash is attributed to the driver in 94% of cases. That does not tell you the percent of cases where the driver is doing anything riskier than "being human".

If you can find a source that talks directly about risky behavior, it would be appreciated.

[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[mc32]

What does risky behavior mean? Is splitting lanes risky behavior? Is simply looking before crossing an intersection risky behavior (by cars, by bicycles), is taking out a bike in pouring rain risky? Is it the person doing doughnuts, the person doing sideshows, the person talking while driving, the two motorcyclists riding side by side? The person changing lanes without signaling? The Sunday stunters who rev their bikes down the freeways?

I think, beside the Sunday church drivers, very few people would be classified "safe" driver or rider.

[ipsin]

I'm intrigued by the gap between manslaughter where a car is not involved and manslaughter where it is.

The penalties involved for driving recklessly and killing someone with a car seem very light to me, even as many other kinds of criminal sentences seem disproportionately harsh.

Ending someone's life with carelessness should not forgive the result.

[cafard]

Well, a small car has about 20x the mass of the average human, is much harder, and feels slow when driven at a speed that only the best athletes can reach. It also has uses recognized by society. With any other instrument not intended for killing, i.e. anything but a knife or a gun, it is generally hard work to kill someone. That is how I would explain the gap: non-vehicular homicide suggests malicious intent either by the instrument or the effort.

But I am no legislator.

[bjelkeman-again]

I was going to say that I think it is the car culture. But the NYC have fewer cars, so maybe that is to simplistic. But then a lot of people I meet talk about driver behaviour in NYC being reckless. Different cities/locations have different driving behaviour. It is possible to change it, but it takes a long and dedicated effort.

Why Sweden has so few road deaths http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/ec...

[swsieber]

I think the blame game is part of it.

OTOH, I think we play the blame game is because people refuse to take responsibility.

And one other contributing bit is the entitlement(/victimized) game.

Honestly though, both the blame and the entitlement games are poisonous because they provde an easy vehicle for anger and offloading responsibility.

FWIW I support the shift in semantics (from accident to crash), because of two things : 1) driving brings a calculated risk, and 2) safety when driving suffers from the tradegy of the commons (I think that's the term) - it's easy to relatively ok (safe for yourself) to drive like a maniac when everyone else is driving ok.

I think using the term accidents hides those dynamics more.

Edit: I'd like to note that I think that this a useful mental model to have, not necessarily the correct model. And there's definitely more nuance than I expressed. Also, I'm not sold on the criminalization part - I do think that a terminology shift might help.

[mturmon]

I have no problem criminalizing the kind of reckless driving that the GP comment mentions in its last sentence.

Where I live, it is generally true that many drivers are occasionally reckless, endangering lives in obvious ways, and this recklessness is winked at by our present driving culture. It's an error.

[duaneb]

Well, is using accident all the time that much better? The truth is somewhere between 100% accidents and 100% at fault. There's no clear win to either side of the spectrum.

[sitkack]

I'll pay you $20 to use the cross walks in Chicago.

[m0nty]

> you'll see the language very precisely target the user, not the device

Not to mention, all other users of that device, as in "bloody cyclists, always going through red lights and riding on the pavement" etc. Even more weirdly, blaming cyclists for motor traffic congestion and pollution, as if cars don't do those things all on their own. (Both these memes rely on "bicycles hold up the traffic," with the second adding "which causes the cars to be less efficient and produce more pollution.")

[Asooka]

How the fuck (sorry for language) does a bicycle hold up traffic. I have not seen a lane so tight, that a car and a bicycle can not occupy it at the same time and pass each other.

[douche]

Narrow road, with no shoulder for them to get out into, and a long stream of oncoming traffic in the other lane? There are a lot of places where you come up behind a cyclist, and it's kind of an "oh fuck, am I going to be able to get around before I get squeezed? Hopefully this asshole semi coming at me doesn't swerve over the yellow line, and the cyclist stays on their line..."

[drewm1980]

I grew up commuting to school by bike in Evanston, IL. There was one place like this on my commute that sounded like this.

I got forced off the road once, learned my lesson, and now I take the lane in similar situations. You are far safer with an angry driver behind you who knows you are there, and wants to kill you figuratively but not literally.

Cars incentivize drivers to take risks with other people's lives, but drivers will almost never kill deliberately if you make the choice black and white for them.

[m0nty]

It's basically just blaming the outgroup.

[FireBeyond]

Emergency services workers used to do training called "EVAP" - Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention. In some ways it served as an exemption from requiring a CDL for driving, say, a fire engine.

This training was changed a while ago, and is now called "EVIP" - Emergency Vehicle _Incident_ Prevention.

[timbre]

Is there some evidence that changing the terminology this way has an effect -- say an increase in prosecutions or safer driving habits? I was surprised to come to the end of the article without anything about this one way or the other.

[godzillabrennus]

Brian, I'm glad you took a minute to post on here. I'm launching a beta within the State of California for a grassroots advocacy startup that aims to help trade associations and advocacy groups with their work. If you happen to have interest in chatting with me about it feel free to email me hn(at)strapr(dot)com and we can find time to connect.

[LoSboccacc]

two days ago I hit a pothole hard and a tire deflated. what a crash :(