[lmm]

People are weird about their cars and make major errors in judgement as a result (e.g. we tolerate incredibly high rates of people getting killed because they were "hit by a car", as though the driver had nothing to do with it). Pushing back on that is absolutely worthwhile.

[emodendroket]

Which has approximately zero to do with the anthropomorphization of the car itself. I could have chosen a different machine or tool to make my point.

[lmm]

> Which has approximately zero to do with the anthropomorphization of the car itself.

You don't think people talking about the car doing things has anything to do with anthropomorphising the car?

[emodendroket]

No, in general I don't buy this idea that if we start using awkward phrases like "died by suicide" everywhere or avoiding phrases like "car accident" (which, despite what advocates claim, is a literally accurate description of unintentionally hitting someone or something with your car) but avoid changing any of the circumstances that cause the behavior it changes anything.

[lmm]

That's a completely different claim from the one you were making in your previous comment.

> avoid changing any of the circumstances that cause the behavior

The normalisation of unsafe driving is the circumstance that causes the behaviour. Just look at how the cultural shift in how drink-driving is perceived over the last few decades has changed the rate of it happening.