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In transport academia "crash" vs "accident" is contested. I'm a "crash" person but I'm lampooned by "accident" people for it. It's the wrong word or maybe it do

In transport academia "crash" vs "accident" is contested. I'm a "crash" person but I'm lampooned by "accident" people for it. It's the wrong word or maybe it doesn't matter. There are even people who argue for some are "crash" and some are "accident". The "accident" example quoted is a motorcyclist who was struck in the face (not wearing a full-face helmet) by a bird then rode onto the wrong side and struck another motorcyclist, at least one died. So was it the bird's fault, ie. an unpredictable and without human involvement, or should the first motorcyclist had a full face helmet? My view is that "accident" implies an act-of-god that couldn't be prevented, whereas a "crash" is an impact, there is no doubt that an impact occurred. If you write off a "crash" as an "accident" you are tempted to not investigate and try and learn from it. The more you dig deeper into "accidents" is you find they some are not. With a decreasing number of fatal crashes, in my Australian state but the same number of police investigating they are starting to find (and prove) that some crashes are deliberate. What has long been suspected of the possibility of suicide and murder by head-on crash is proving to be real. Words can be important.

SauciestGNU 6y ago
Two thoughts here. First, why do we need to choose between "crash" or "accident"? Why can't journalists be more descriptive, even in headlines, by saying something like "bird strike", "single vehicle collision", etc? Second, there's a saying with the motorcyclists I personally know, "full face or no face", meaning in the event of a mishap, helmets that provide less coverage are far less likely to protect the rider. I don't think we should mandate what type of helmet people wear, or wearing a helmet at all, but assigning some responsibility to the rider who got hit where a full face helmet would have protected might be appropriate.
murphyslab 6y ago
There's a similar idea that I've heard since about 2010 about subtly-influencing differences in how a human language appears to impact cognition. > Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase." [0] Here's a figure from the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/480/90/sites/default/files/fausey-1.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.econo... The difference between "crash" (there's likely a human agent) and "accident" (there is no human agent) seems to be the same. On the other hand, in my experience from editing the professional writing of colleagues, there's often subtle implications from the chose of words. We tend to have so many different options in English, but two words never really mean the same thing because each carries different connotations either from history or from usage. Yet many readers aren't quite aware of those implications. I'm not sure if the implication does not exist for them, or if they are simply not aware of how it might colour their perception. [0] "Lost in translation?", The Economist, 2010-07-29, https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-translation https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-transla...

SauciestGNU 6y ago

Two thoughts here. First, why do we need to choose between "crash" or "accident"? Why can't journalists be more descriptive, even in headlines, by saying something like "bird strike", "single vehicle collision", etc? Second, there's a saying with the motorcyclists I personally know, "full face or no face", meaning in the event of a mishap, helmets that provide less coverage are far less likely to protect the rider. I don't think we should mandate what type of helmet people wear, or wearing a helmet at all, but assigning some responsibility to the rider who got hit where a full face helmet would have protected might be appropriate.

murphyslab 6y ago

There's a similar idea that I've heard since about 2010 about subtly-influencing differences in how a human language appears to impact cognition. > Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: "The vase broke itself," rather than "John broke the vase." [0] Here's a figure from the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/480/90/sites/default/files/fausey-1.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20210319233610/https://www.econo... The difference between "crash" (there's likely a human agent) and "accident" (there is no human agent) seems to be the same. On the other hand, in my experience from editing the professional writing of colleagues, there's often subtle implications from the chose of words. We tend to have so many different options in English, but two words never really mean the same thing because each carries different connotations either from history or from usage. Yet many readers aren't quite aware of those implications. I'm not sure if the implication does not exist for them, or if they are simply not aware of how it might colour their perception. [0] "Lost in translation?", The Economist, 2010-07-29, https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-translation https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/07/29/lost-in-transla...