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>Here’s a quick question: how far would you have to drive before you die in a car accident? Please don't call them "accidents". https://crashnotaccident.com h
by snthd 6y ago
>Here’s a quick question: how far would you have to drive before you die in a car accident?
Please don't call them "accidents".
https://crashnotaccident.com https://crashnotaccident.com
>Before the labor movement, factory owners would say "it was an accident" when American workers were injured in unsafe conditions.
>Before the movement to combat drunk driving, intoxicated drivers would say "it was an accident" when they crashed their cars.
>Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.
>Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word "accident" today.
- ljlolel 6y agoThanks for the feedback, I agree. I updated it to 'crash'
- ljlolel 6y agoWhy was this downvoted?
- nottorp 6y ago>Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. I suppose we could ban streets and cars... if they're all so dangerous?
- sp332 6y agoWe've banned certain types of streets and many, many types of cars. So... yes?
- dkural 6y agoNorway is working on reaching 0 deaths, in their "Vision Zero" program. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/01/03/vision-zero-norwegian-capital-completely-quashes-road-deaths/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/01/03/vision-zero-norwegian...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- judge2020 6y agoYou're right - usually insurance will call crashes 'accidents' in order to reduce perceived liability, although the word does have a place for incidents where it wasn't preventable (such as a sudden hail, or a billboard falling, or any number of outside factors causing someone to hit another car to avoid their own injury). https://www.patrickdaniellaw.com/crash-vs-accident-difference/ https://www.patrickdaniellaw.com/crash-vs-accident-differenc...
- axaxs 6y agoI don't know, I saw this same argument in the gun community. Stop calling them accidental discharges, call them negligent discharges. Both they and you make good points as to why. But, then what does the meaning of accident become? With this line of thinking, nothing is an accident, everything has a cause and potentially a prevention. So once nothing is an accident, then we can start using the word accident again? I mean, most car crashes are unintentional(as are injuries at factories, and gun discharges) so why are they not accidents? Or are you arguing for the word and concept of accident to not exist at all?
- jschwartzi 6y agoI think the argument is that so much of safety and risk is about whether a risk is acceptable or not. If you work in a foundry you may run a very real risk of being burned by hot metal. But the question is whether a pedestrian simply walking past the foundry should bear the same risk should there be an incident. What makes a risk "acceptable," in other words? And it strikes me that much of that depends on the individual experiencing the hazard, the nature of the hazard itself, as well as the risk of an incident involving the hazard.
- solidsnack9000 6y agoAn accident is a harm that wasn't intended. It might be negligent, it might be due to a mechanical failure. There are different levels of culpability in those cases; but neither is as culpable as intentional harm. Sometimes being more specific about causation is important; sometimes being more specific about culpability is important.
- posterboy 6y agoac-cident more or less literally means crash or collaps, cado "to fall", and might be akin to catastrophe, kata "down". ad- (assimilated ac-) might mean frontal, approximately, or compare to ago "go, drive" (voiceless e. g. in act). It's also pretty pretty close to, what's a good example, sui-cide, electro-cution, so we might refer to car-cide or ac-cide, i.e. death by driving, with some poetic license. It's not a coincident, where the stress lies on in, for an hinest one-time case. Also cp. case, casus by the way, from the same root. It is rather formulaic, which is however reasonable if it should cover even the most minor cases. The fact that accidental could come to mean by chance, involuntary was probably due to the consequences being a bigger worry than the causes, in most cases. Legalese has developed a more fine grained scale of responsibility, leaving room for doubt between dolus eventualis, dolus directus 1 and 2 and in contradistion so called negligentia, luxuria and culpa latis all of which should be nevertheless culpable, in theory. However it is not always clear who to blame. Certainly not the wording, is it?
- souprock 6y agoWe have the idea of "innocent until proven guilty". So a crash is an accident until you can show that it was done on purpose.