5 ms·

> it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend This wouldn't have been accidental, it would have been fully your own fault for negligence. I'll fully

by riffic 5y ago

> it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend This wouldn't have been accidental, it would have been fully your own fault for negligence. I'll fully admit this is a pedantic tangent but it's been long acknowledged that "accident" is a problematic word to describe vehicle crashes because it minimizes the agency of a driver and intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash (for instance, using an app to navigate instead of being better acquainted with your route ahead of time): https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...

RC_ITR 5y ago
This comment is not the way to win that culture war. Agree that using phones while driving is generally bad, but implying that it is irresponsible to use turn-by-turn (and suggesting the alternative of just knowing where you are) is just more likely to make people ignore the problem all together.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- detaro 5y ago
  > but implying that it is irresponsible to use turn-by-turn It isn't irresponsible to use turn-by-turn navigation (and I don't think GP is implying that). It's irresponsible to fiddle with the phone you are using for that purpose while driving.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >It isn't irresponsible to use turn-by-turn navigation (and I don't think GP is implying that) They wrote: "...intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash (for instance, using an app to navigate..." They straight out stated that using navigation predictably leads to crashes and must be regarded as intentional. So I don't see any way to avoid the conclusion that they think navigation is ethically and practically the same as DUI/DWI.
- version_five 5y ago
  I've seen this "accident" redefinition around before, it looks to me like some silly armchair pedantry, combining the sports of redefining words and judging others. We have courts that can judge culpability / responsibility and decide if a collision was a no fault accident or something negligent, deliberate, whatever. But we also have these neo-political thugs that want to try and use language to manipulate and define what we are allowed to do, so you get these childish redefinitions.
  - riffic 5y ago
    It's not a redefinition- it's an acknowledgment of the actual definition of the word.
benatkin 5y ago
> It's my fault for using the phone, but it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend
- yupper32 5y ago
  "it" did not very nearly cause 2 accidents. They're trying to avoid some of the blame, as if they're not 100% at fault.
  - thrashh 5y ago
    OP could have just used that language for dramatic effect. Don’t distract from the point.
  - abxytg 5y ago
    > It's my fault for using the phone I do take the blame. I'm driving somewhere 6 hours away that I've never been with a dog in the car. Normally it's quite safe for me to do things like manage turn by turn navigation, and pick up a hands free call, or pause an audiobook, or ask the phone to reroute me to food, gas, or a rest stop. If you are able to drive solo 6 hours to a new place in total silence without stopping for food, rest, or gas, or touching the turn by turn navigations to make an update, I'll fly you out to me and pay you $1000 a day to teach me how.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      You're still avoiding taking all the blame by making excuses and being super defensive. You know damn well sitting in total silence was not my suggestion. I am also able to manage those things without taking my eyes off the road for more than I would looking at my speedometer. If there's a new UI that's new and different, you should have pulled over to figure it out instead of almost crashing not once, but twice.
      - abxytg 5y ago
        For whatever reason you really have an axe to grind here. I understand you can get pedantic about my phrasing and language but when I tell you I was 100% at fault, what do you gain by picking apart my language to try to prove to me I don't feel that way? I do feel that way, thanks! > I am also able to manage those things without taking my eyes off the road for more than I would looking at my speedometer. Yea so that would be normal operating procedure for me as well! Definitely I should have pulled over when the severity of the UI change became clear to me, but it was already too late and I was slamming the brakes. I was in the far left lane in bumper to bumper traffic and it wasn't quite as simple as you think it must have been. Can you understand my frustration at needing to do that? I made the wrong choice and I didn't do that. Can you still understand my frustration with the situation?
zamfi 5y ago
> it's been long acknowledged that "accident" is a problematic word to describe vehicle crashes because it minimizes the agency of a driver and intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash I seem to recall that this was intentional, to improve acceptance of motor vehicles in the early days. Certainly the way laws are written, there is quite a high bar before an "accident" brings the kinds of criminal charges that any other reason for a similar action would trigger. For example, if you kill someone through inattention, that is often charged as involuntary manslaughter, unless you did it with a car and were following traffic laws, in which case it is rarely charged. As a society we have traditionally come to accept that driving kills lots of people, often but not always at random, and we don't want to be handing out random prison sentences for those with merely bad luck. (Or, at least, without provable blame.) I suspect there will be backlash, your post is one example.
- riffic 5y ago
  > I seem to recall that this was intentional, to improve acceptance of motor vehicles in the early days. The link I shared previously (Fonseca, 2020) mentions this: --- Why do we talk about crashes like this? It didn't happen by accident. You may know the history of how early carmakers turned "jaywalking" — a term initially meant to shame pedestrians out of the street — into an actual crime. But the emerging auto industry also had a hand in influencing how the public perceived fatal collisions. In the early days of the automobile, reckless drivers were killing pedestrians, mostly women and children, at alarming rates. Newspaper coverage in the 1910s and '20s painted drivers as "remorseless murderers" and angry mobs reportedly dragged drivers involved in fatal collisions from their cars. So the industry went into damage control, with one national auto industry group even creating a free wire service for newspapers, which incentivized reporters to send in basic details of a traffic collision in return for a full, ready-to-publish article. What a thoughtful convenience! Except, unsurprisingly, the narrative in those articles largely shifted the blame to pedestrians and used the term "accident" to describe crashes, which helped embed the term in the minds of news readers across the nation. In the face of the rising death toll, a 1926 editorial in The New Republic titled "The Murderous Motor" proclaimed: "...much of the present waste of life is inevitable and will continue no matter what preventive measures are taken." Imagine if outlets today were publishing stories about data privacy from a free wire service run by Facebook, Google or Uber. That's essentially the ethical breach many newspapers allowed back in the '20s and '30s — and the echoes and effects can still be seen in news stories today. The auto industry exploited the power of the press because its leaders understood that language and perspective (and growing ad revenue) can shift culture — and recent scientific research backs that up.
firebaze 5y ago
Not sure why this was downvoted. It is my responsibility as a driver to not be distracted. If I am, I just stop at the next possibility - what's stopping me (pun intended)? I'd rather not be responsible for any accident related to google maps, because ultimately, it'd be my fault, and I'd not feel relieved just because google changed its layout. This is not about excusing the bad pattern of modernizing UI just for the sake of it, just about not relieving myself out of responsibility.
criddell 5y ago
When I was 16, my driver's ed teacher would correct us anytime somebody used the word accident. He insisted on using the word collision instead.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  Driving off the road ain't a collision if you don't collide with anything, but it's still an accident. I agree with you, but that ain't a great word either. I'd like to have a word that also includes did-not-cause-accident-by-luck failures, such as running a red light or failing to notice a bicyclist who slammed brakes to avoid you sideswiping them. Best I can offer is "incident".
abxytg 5y ago
I was gonna put this comment deep down the chain but Ill just leave it top level for everyone who is worked up about me using the normal phrase "car accident" to describe an incident where I would have been 100% at fault for using my phone. I agree that I as the driver would have been at fault in an accident. Car accident is a really common thing to call it even when the person naming the incident is 100% at fault and knows it. I would have been 100% at fault and I know that. Still, it's hard not to get frustrated when previously safe activities become unsafe because of a UI update that was ostensibly made to increase safety.

by riffic 5y ago

RC_ITR 5y ago

This comment is not the way to win that culture war. Agree that using phones while driving is generally bad, but implying that it is irresponsible to use turn-by-turn (and suggesting the alternative of just knowing where you are) is just more likely to make people ignore the problem all together.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
detaro 5y ago
> but implying that it is irresponsible to use turn-by-turn It isn't irresponsible to use turn-by-turn navigation (and I don't think GP is implying that). It's irresponsible to fiddle with the phone you are using for that purpose while driving.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >It isn't irresponsible to use turn-by-turn navigation (and I don't think GP is implying that) They wrote: "...intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash (for instance, using an app to navigate..." They straight out stated that using navigation predictably leads to crashes and must be regarded as intentional. So I don't see any way to avoid the conclusion that they think navigation is ethically and practically the same as DUI/DWI.
version_five 5y ago
I've seen this "accident" redefinition around before, it looks to me like some silly armchair pedantry, combining the sports of redefining words and judging others. We have courts that can judge culpability / responsibility and decide if a collision was a no fault accident or something negligent, deliberate, whatever. But we also have these neo-political thugs that want to try and use language to manipulate and define what we are allowed to do, so you get these childish redefinitions.
- riffic 5y ago
  It's not a redefinition- it's an acknowledgment of the actual definition of the word.

benatkin 5y ago

> It's my fault for using the phone, but it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend

yupper32 5y ago
"it" did not very nearly cause 2 accidents. They're trying to avoid some of the blame, as if they're not 100% at fault.
- thrashh 5y ago
  OP could have just used that language for dramatic effect. Don’t distract from the point.
- abxytg 5y ago
  > It's my fault for using the phone I do take the blame. I'm driving somewhere 6 hours away that I've never been with a dog in the car. Normally it's quite safe for me to do things like manage turn by turn navigation, and pick up a hands free call, or pause an audiobook, or ask the phone to reroute me to food, gas, or a rest stop. If you are able to drive solo 6 hours to a new place in total silence without stopping for food, rest, or gas, or touching the turn by turn navigations to make an update, I'll fly you out to me and pay you $1000 a day to teach me how.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    You're still avoiding taking all the blame by making excuses and being super defensive. You know damn well sitting in total silence was not my suggestion. I am also able to manage those things without taking my eyes off the road for more than I would looking at my speedometer. If there's a new UI that's new and different, you should have pulled over to figure it out instead of almost crashing not once, but twice.
    - abxytg 5y ago
      For whatever reason you really have an axe to grind here. I understand you can get pedantic about my phrasing and language but when I tell you I was 100% at fault, what do you gain by picking apart my language to try to prove to me I don't feel that way? I do feel that way, thanks! > I am also able to manage those things without taking my eyes off the road for more than I would looking at my speedometer. Yea so that would be normal operating procedure for me as well! Definitely I should have pulled over when the severity of the UI change became clear to me, but it was already too late and I was slamming the brakes. I was in the far left lane in bumper to bumper traffic and it wasn't quite as simple as you think it must have been. Can you understand my frustration at needing to do that? I made the wrong choice and I didn't do that. Can you still understand my frustration with the situation?

zamfi 5y ago

> it's been long acknowledged that "accident" is a problematic word to describe vehicle crashes because it minimizes the agency of a driver and intentional decision making processes that lead up to a crash I seem to recall that this was intentional, to improve acceptance of motor vehicles in the early days. Certainly the way laws are written, there is quite a high bar before an "accident" brings the kinds of criminal charges that any other reason for a similar action would trigger. For example, if you kill someone through inattention, that is often charged as involuntary manslaughter, unless you did it with a car and were following traffic laws, in which case it is rarely charged. As a society we have traditionally come to accept that driving kills lots of people, often but not always at random, and we don't want to be handing out random prison sentences for those with merely bad luck. (Or, at least, without provable blame.) I suspect there will be backlash, your post is one example.

riffic 5y ago
> I seem to recall that this was intentional, to improve acceptance of motor vehicles in the early days. The link I shared previously (Fonseca, 2020) mentions this: --- Why do we talk about crashes like this? It didn't happen by accident. You may know the history of how early carmakers turned "jaywalking" — a term initially meant to shame pedestrians out of the street — into an actual crime. But the emerging auto industry also had a hand in influencing how the public perceived fatal collisions. In the early days of the automobile, reckless drivers were killing pedestrians, mostly women and children, at alarming rates. Newspaper coverage in the 1910s and '20s painted drivers as "remorseless murderers" and angry mobs reportedly dragged drivers involved in fatal collisions from their cars. So the industry went into damage control, with one national auto industry group even creating a free wire service for newspapers, which incentivized reporters to send in basic details of a traffic collision in return for a full, ready-to-publish article. What a thoughtful convenience! Except, unsurprisingly, the narrative in those articles largely shifted the blame to pedestrians and used the term "accident" to describe crashes, which helped embed the term in the minds of news readers across the nation. In the face of the rising death toll, a 1926 editorial in The New Republic titled "The Murderous Motor" proclaimed: "...much of the present waste of life is inevitable and will continue no matter what preventive measures are taken." Imagine if outlets today were publishing stories about data privacy from a free wire service run by Facebook, Google or Uber. That's essentially the ethical breach many newspapers allowed back in the '20s and '30s — and the echoes and effects can still be seen in news stories today. The auto industry exploited the power of the press because its leaders understood that language and perspective (and growing ad revenue) can shift culture — and recent scientific research backs that up.

firebaze 5y ago

Not sure why this was downvoted. It is my responsibility as a driver to not be distracted. If I am, I just stop at the next possibility - what's stopping me (pun intended)? I'd rather not be responsible for any accident related to google maps, because ultimately, it'd be my fault, and I'd not feel relieved just because google changed its layout. This is not about excusing the bad pattern of modernizing UI just for the sake of it, just about not relieving myself out of responsibility.

criddell 5y ago

When I was 16, my driver's ed teacher would correct us anytime somebody used the word accident. He insisted on using the word collision instead.

yencabulator 5y ago
Driving off the road ain't a collision if you don't collide with anything, but it's still an accident. I agree with you, but that ain't a great word either. I'd like to have a word that also includes did-not-cause-accident-by-luck failures, such as running a red light or failing to notice a bicyclist who slammed brakes to avoid you sideswiping them. Best I can offer is "incident".

abxytg 5y ago

I was gonna put this comment deep down the chain but Ill just leave it top level for everyone who is worked up about me using the normal phrase "car accident" to describe an incident where I would have been 100% at fault for using my phone. I agree that I as the driver would have been at fault in an accident. Car accident is a really common thing to call it even when the person naming the incident is 100% at fault and knows it. I would have been 100% at fault and I know that. Still, it's hard not to get frustrated when previously safe activities become unsafe because of a UI update that was ostensibly made to increase safety.