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Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the prev

by riffic 6y ago

Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the preventable root causes that can be learned from here. context: * https://laist.com/2020/01/03/car_crash_accident_traffic_violence_language.php https://laist.com/2020/01/03/car_crash_accident_traffic_viol... * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/04/04/associated-press-cautions-journalists-that-crashes-arent-always-accidents/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/04/04/associated-press-caut... * https://chi.streetsblog.org/2021/04/05/laspatas-ordinance-would-remove-reference-to-traffic-accidents-from-municipal-code/ https://chi.streetsblog.org/2021/04/05/laspatas-ordinance-wo... It'd be nice if folks here would be mindful of the role language plays. Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes. last edit I swear, but a good catchphrase I've seen recently that I'll be pinching is "Accidents happen, crashes don’t have to."

andrew_v4 6y ago
Wow, how unhelpful. I don't know the acceptable way to call this out, but how about focusing on substance instead of just bringing pedantic language stuff into the mix. I see this happening a lot, when people can't find a real way to contribute, they start debating the position of commas or whether it should be called inquiry or enquiry or whatever. It distracts from real debate, and maybe gets you some attention (lots of bureaucratic leader types love this sort of thing) but it's really wasting everybody's time. (Edit, the irony isn't lost on me of providing a low value comment that doesn't contribute to the discussion in response to one I accuse of something similar. But I've seen so much time wasted and so many people getting ahead and in some cases basically build a career on engaging with these kind of language things instead of doing any actual work, I wanted to bring it up)
- shkkmo 6y ago
  His comment added a lot more to the conversation that your comment (or mine.) Sometimes pedantism is important and useful. In this case I have no problems imagining that we could reframe our understanding of how to design traffic systems by reframing the language we use to talk about how those systems fail. Not that I necessarily agree, but I don't think you can dismiss the argument by waving your hands and saying "pedantism is bad".
vladoh 6y ago
Interesting - I never thought about this aspect! This crash was of course 100% preventable by... driving.
- riffic 6y ago
  > crash was of course 100% preventable by... driving. By following the guidance indicated to you in the manufacturer's owner's manual that every new car is supplied, yes.
Angostura 6y ago
> The word "accident" suggests nothing could have been done to predict or prevent the collision. I mean, that's clearly rubbish, isn't? When I accidentally shut my thumb in the door, I use the word accident to indicate I didn't do it intentionally. It doesn't minimise the fact that I was a blithering idiot and could have avoided a broken thumb with the minimum of attention.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I happen to agree (I've had this exact debate before), but to a lot of people it's a loaded term.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- acdha 6y ago
  The language is definitely a bit tricky: think about how many accidents are caused by driving aggressively or choosing to use a phone while driving. Nobody chose the accident but it was a direct, easily predicted consequence of a deliberate choice and wouldn’t have happened if they had followed the law. That seems to be rather different from you hitting your finger with a hammer, unless perhaps you were trying to check Facebook at the same time like the average commuter.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- hnick 6y ago
  To me it's just a matter of stakes. No one will die if you close your door without taking care. On a road that's a realistic threat so people should account for it in how they act. For me that moves it from accident to negligence (in an everyday language sense, not legalese).
  - deleted 6y ago
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heavyset_go 6y ago
> Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the preventable root causes that can be learned from here Nah, it's just a line from law enforcement and prosecutors who want to feed more people to the justice system. More convictions means more revenue and career advancement.
- bumby 6y ago
  People who study safety are not synonymous with law enforcement and prosecutors. Edit: having previously worked with safety officers in aerospace who take this exact stance on definitions, I can say they aren’t neither law enforcement or very much concerned with putting people into the criminal justice system. Their concern is mainly to understand the systemic root causes that f accidents in order to prevent them from recurring.
miracle2k 6y ago
Hot Fuzz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4
- geenew 6y ago
  That line in the movie has always stuck with me. It was almost too good, since it was so correct and insightful that there was no real comedy and it took me out out the movie.
FireBeyond 6y ago
Emergency vehicle driver training (which is acceptable in some states in place of a CDL, and also covers other rules) used to be called "EVAP" (Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention). It's now called EVIP (Emergency Vehicle Incident Prevention).
darawk 6y ago
> Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes. The argument made here isn't very good. "Traffic violence" implies intention to do violence. Intention to speed is indeed intention to incur the risk of harm, but that risk is in general quite low, whereas 'traffic violence' strongly implies direct intention to cause harm. Intention to take risks that have harm as a potential consequence is not equivalent. It may be true that 'accident' cuts too strongly in the other direction, but the correct term is clearly closer to 'accident' than it is to 'violence'.
- Retric 6y ago
  Putting others at risk is harm. The amount of harm was larger than expected, but that doesn’t excuse the intent to cause harm anymore than someone dying during a beating is excused because they didn’t mean it. Reckless Endangerment for example is inherently a criminal offense even if no one was injured.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    No, intent matters. Intending to kill someone with a car is punished far more severely than killing someone because you were speeding and lost control.
    - Retric 6y ago
      That’s irrelevant. While attempting to kill someone is considered a worse offense their both harm.
      - Retric 6y ago
        To be more clear, the amount of harm harm intended is the only difference. Manslaughter is still illegal even if the penalty for murder is higher. The difference is simply in the degree of harm intended not in the lack of intent to cause harm. If someone dies through because say you happened to have parked a normal car in a normal parking space then that’s perfectly fine, but kill someone because you where speeding and that’s your fault.
bigiain 6y ago
A friend of mine has a saying "There are no accidents, there are only fuckups. Maybe getting hit by an asteroid would be an accident - but hitting or getting hit by another vehicle, or driving into the scenery, is _always_ a fuckup on somebody's part, not an accident." (Though I'll bet "people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety" have a more socially/professionally acceptable word for "fuckup")
- dbsmith83 6y ago
  That's a stupid phrase. I can think of many cases where there was not a fuckup yet vehicles collide. Example: someone has some kind of acute medical issue happen (maybe a seizure) and crashes. Or maybe there is black ice that you cant see. Maybe a truck flings a tiny rock it couldnt see in time into the windshield of a car behind it. It is really easy to come up with examples like this.
  - pdpi 6y ago
    > Or maybe there is black ice that you cant see This deserves expanding upon. You’d rightly assume people who live in cold places know to look for ice on the road. The only traffic accident my ex was involved in was also the only time I ever saw ice on the road in Lisbon, in 30 years of living there. We saw a pileup, she barely touched the breaks, and we entered a skid. Ended up bumping against a car in the pileup (at pretty low speed so it was harmless). Still — freak accidents do happen.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > I can think of many cases where there was not a fuckup yet vehicles collide. And yet the examples are extreme cases, which while do happen, are very rarely the cause of crashes. The vast majority of crashes is not because someone had a seizure, it's because they weren't paying attention or were incompetent.
    - dbsmith83 6y ago
      Right, but if you actually read the parent comment you will notice that "_always_" was used and even emphasized, along with "there are no accidents", and the only example provided of a non-accident is a non-car crash example of a meteorite. My examples are much more plausible, and the list goes on. I came up with those examples in like 5 seconds. The point is that there are lots of cases where it truly was an accident. > "There are no accidents, there are only fuckups. Maybe getting hit by an asteroid would be an accident - but hitting or getting hit by another vehicle, or driving into the scenery, is _always_ a fuckup on somebody's part, not an accident."
ralusek 6y ago
The word "accident," as it pertains to traffic collisions, is actually just translated to "collision" in my head. In no way does my brain understand it to mean that "this was done unintentionally," it instead basically acts as a homonym to the word which has anything to do with intention.
georgeplusplus 6y ago
The NTSB openly defines transportation investigations as accidents. The entire purpose of the agency existing is to issue recommendations based on the root cause for transportation accidents to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Any foreign transportation safety agency counterpart in the world has the exact same definition. Whoever the “people who study the problem space” are it sounds like they are trying to twist language for their own personal beliefs and not really studying the problem at all. https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ntsb-accident-investigations-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ntsb-accident-investigat...

by riffic 6y ago

andrew_v4 6y ago

Wow, how unhelpful. I don't know the acceptable way to call this out, but how about focusing on substance instead of just bringing pedantic language stuff into the mix. I see this happening a lot, when people can't find a real way to contribute, they start debating the position of commas or whether it should be called inquiry or enquiry or whatever. It distracts from real debate, and maybe gets you some attention (lots of bureaucratic leader types love this sort of thing) but it's really wasting everybody's time. (Edit, the irony isn't lost on me of providing a low value comment that doesn't contribute to the discussion in response to one I accuse of something similar. But I've seen so much time wasted and so many people getting ahead and in some cases basically build a career on engaging with these kind of language things instead of doing any actual work, I wanted to bring it up)

shkkmo 6y ago
His comment added a lot more to the conversation that your comment (or mine.) Sometimes pedantism is important and useful. In this case I have no problems imagining that we could reframe our understanding of how to design traffic systems by reframing the language we use to talk about how those systems fail. Not that I necessarily agree, but I don't think you can dismiss the argument by waving your hands and saying "pedantism is bad".

vladoh 6y ago

Interesting - I never thought about this aspect! This crash was of course 100% preventable by... driving.

riffic 6y ago
> crash was of course 100% preventable by... driving. By following the guidance indicated to you in the manufacturer's owner's manual that every new car is supplied, yes.

Angostura 6y ago

> The word "accident" suggests nothing could have been done to predict or prevent the collision. I mean, that's clearly rubbish, isn't? When I accidentally shut my thumb in the door, I use the word accident to indicate I didn't do it intentionally. It doesn't minimise the fact that I was a blithering idiot and could have avoided a broken thumb with the minimum of attention.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I happen to agree (I've had this exact debate before), but to a lot of people it's a loaded term.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
acdha 6y ago
The language is definitely a bit tricky: think about how many accidents are caused by driving aggressively or choosing to use a phone while driving. Nobody chose the accident but it was a direct, easily predicted consequence of a deliberate choice and wouldn’t have happened if they had followed the law. That seems to be rather different from you hitting your finger with a hammer, unless perhaps you were trying to check Facebook at the same time like the average commuter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hnick 6y ago
To me it's just a matter of stakes. No one will die if you close your door without taking care. On a road that's a realistic threat so people should account for it in how they act. For me that moves it from accident to negligence (in an everyday language sense, not legalese).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

heavyset_go 6y ago

> Just for the record, people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety have disavowed the word "accident" because it all too often dismisses the preventable root causes that can be learned from here Nah, it's just a line from law enforcement and prosecutors who want to feed more people to the justice system. More convictions means more revenue and career advancement.

bumby 6y ago
People who study safety are not synonymous with law enforcement and prosecutors. Edit: having previously worked with safety officers in aerospace who take this exact stance on definitions, I can say they aren’t neither law enforcement or very much concerned with putting people into the criminal justice system. Their concern is mainly to understand the systemic root causes that f accidents in order to prevent them from recurring.

miracle2k 6y ago

Hot Fuzz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK5CwThaq4

geenew 6y ago
That line in the movie has always stuck with me. It was almost too good, since it was so correct and insightful that there was no real comedy and it took me out out the movie.

FireBeyond 6y ago

Emergency vehicle driver training (which is acceptable in some states in place of a CDL, and also covers other rules) used to be called "EVAP" (Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention). It's now called EVIP (Emergency Vehicle Incident Prevention).

darawk 6y ago

> Here's also a preemptive "intention doesn't matter" because the first post I share covers that in the section "The Semantics of Intention", where it argues that the decisions have already been made in both the designs of our streets and in the choices people make behind the wheel, and those have known and changeable outcomes. The argument made here isn't very good. "Traffic violence" implies intention to do violence. Intention to speed is indeed intention to incur the risk of harm, but that risk is in general quite low, whereas 'traffic violence' strongly implies direct intention to cause harm. Intention to take risks that have harm as a potential consequence is not equivalent. It may be true that 'accident' cuts too strongly in the other direction, but the correct term is clearly closer to 'accident' than it is to 'violence'.

Retric 6y ago
Putting others at risk is harm. The amount of harm was larger than expected, but that doesn’t excuse the intent to cause harm anymore than someone dying during a beating is excused because they didn’t mean it. Reckless Endangerment for example is inherently a criminal offense even if no one was injured.
- kortilla 6y ago
  No, intent matters. Intending to kill someone with a car is punished far more severely than killing someone because you were speeding and lost control.
  - Retric 6y ago
    That’s irrelevant. While attempting to kill someone is considered a worse offense their both harm.
    - Retric 6y ago
      To be more clear, the amount of harm harm intended is the only difference. Manslaughter is still illegal even if the penalty for murder is higher. The difference is simply in the degree of harm intended not in the lack of intent to cause harm. If someone dies through because say you happened to have parked a normal car in a normal parking space then that’s perfectly fine, but kill someone because you where speeding and that’s your fault.

bigiain 6y ago

A friend of mine has a saying "There are no accidents, there are only fuckups. Maybe getting hit by an asteroid would be an accident - but hitting or getting hit by another vehicle, or driving into the scenery, is _always_ a fuckup on somebody's part, not an accident." (Though I'll bet "people who study the problem space concerning traffic safety" have a more socially/professionally acceptable word for "fuckup")

dbsmith83 6y ago
That's a stupid phrase. I can think of many cases where there was not a fuckup yet vehicles collide. Example: someone has some kind of acute medical issue happen (maybe a seizure) and crashes. Or maybe there is black ice that you cant see. Maybe a truck flings a tiny rock it couldnt see in time into the windshield of a car behind it. It is really easy to come up with examples like this.
- pdpi 6y ago
  > Or maybe there is black ice that you cant see This deserves expanding upon. You’d rightly assume people who live in cold places know to look for ice on the road. The only traffic accident my ex was involved in was also the only time I ever saw ice on the road in Lisbon, in 30 years of living there. We saw a pileup, she barely touched the breaks, and we entered a skid. Ended up bumping against a car in the pileup (at pretty low speed so it was harmless). Still — freak accidents do happen.
- jjav 6y ago
  > I can think of many cases where there was not a fuckup yet vehicles collide. And yet the examples are extreme cases, which while do happen, are very rarely the cause of crashes. The vast majority of crashes is not because someone had a seizure, it's because they weren't paying attention or were incompetent.
  - dbsmith83 6y ago
    Right, but if you actually read the parent comment you will notice that "_always_" was used and even emphasized, along with "there are no accidents", and the only example provided of a non-accident is a non-car crash example of a meteorite. My examples are much more plausible, and the list goes on. I came up with those examples in like 5 seconds. The point is that there are lots of cases where it truly was an accident. > "There are no accidents, there are only fuckups. Maybe getting hit by an asteroid would be an accident - but hitting or getting hit by another vehicle, or driving into the scenery, is _always_ a fuckup on somebody's part, not an accident."

ralusek 6y ago

The word "accident," as it pertains to traffic collisions, is actually just translated to "collision" in my head. In no way does my brain understand it to mean that "this was done unintentionally," it instead basically acts as a homonym to the word which has anything to do with intention.

georgeplusplus 6y ago

The NTSB openly defines transportation investigations as accidents. The entire purpose of the agency existing is to issue recommendations based on the root cause for transportation accidents to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Any foreign transportation safety agency counterpart in the world has the exact same definition. Whoever the “people who study the problem space” are it sounds like they are trying to twist language for their own personal beliefs and not really studying the problem at all. https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ntsb-accident-investigations-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ntsb-accident-investigat...