Accountability and revenge are not the same thing. In fact, accountability within a legal framework is one of the central developments of human civilization pre

Accountability and revenge are not the same thing. In fact, accountability within a legal framework is one of the central developments of human civilization precisely because it preempts extra-legal vengeance. Now, I personally prefer the term collision to crash, but I despise the use of "accident" in the context of a motor vehicle collision. Maybe because I'm an optimist, I assume that the overwhelming majority of collisions are "accidental" only in the sense that the responsible operator is not acting with malicious. However, in the overwhelming majority of situations, they are not operating and/or maintaining their motor vehicle with due care, to the harm of those around them. I believe that use of the term "accident" connotes a lack of agency on the part of the motor vehicle operator, and discourages accountability. Accountability as deterrence is necessary because the consequence of reckless driving and poor maintenance are so dire. Of course, accountability for motor vehicle operators is not the only answer to improving safety - road and junction design play huge parts, and I'd love to see serious attention given to bad infrastructure as part of collision investigations, with follow-up and remediation. Unfortunately - and here is where we perhaps agree about accountability and negative incentives - the parties most commonly investigating motor vehicle collisions are rarely incentivized to look towards the contributions of infrastructure (as they are organs of the same government that operates the infrastructure.) It typically falls to citizen-activists to advocate for changes to road or junction design, which is a shame.