9 ms·

From having watched lots of dash-cam videos recently, I would guess traffic accidents are the riskiest things they regularly deal with. If the truck is still o

by chiph 5y ago

From having watched lots of dash-cam videos recently, I would guess traffic accidents are the riskiest things they regularly deal with. If the truck is still operating afterwards, I expect they don't stop - they let another vehicle that is full of federal agents from the convoy deal with it.

riffic 5y ago
an aside but can we please stop with using "accident" as the default term to describe mayhem involving motor vehicles? This simply dismisses the many risk factors as being simply inevitable even though there are more than likely preventable causes to address. --- Excerpt of "'Car Accident' Or 'Traffic Violence'? The Way We Talk About Crashes Is Evolving", Fonseca, 2020 (https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...): 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.
- Sophistifunk 5y ago
  Go away.
- nsxwolf 5y ago
  People are really trying to push this “traffic violence” thing lately and it feels like an organized campaign. Why?
  - lmm 5y ago
    Because people gradually are shifting away from car-by-default and starting to notice how many people cars (or rather drivers) keep killing? (I started cycling to work about 4 years ago, around the time my city built some new cycle lanes, so of course I became a lot more conscious of how much reckless endangerment goes unpunished when it was happening to me). Because recent events have shown that we can make massive social changes to prevent deaths, so there's more hope that we could do the same for other major causes of death?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      I know things in America are different, but as a lifelong pedestrian who owned a car for less than 2 years and walks all the time, I was endangered by reckless cyclists more often than by reckless drivers. If an asshole shifts his ass from car to bike, he will start riding on the pavement in places that are absolutely unsuitable for that, or on hiking trails that are absolutely unsuitable for that. And I say "he", because it was 100 per cent men. (I am a man too, for the record.) Gals seem to be quite a bit careful.
      - lmm 5y ago
        > I know things in America are different, but as a lifelong pedestrian who owned a car for less than 2 years and walks all the time, I was endangered by reckless cyclists more often than by reckless drivers. Bullshit. You notice reckless cyclists more because they're more unusual, that's all. The statistics for the rate at which pedestrians are killed or seriously injured show that it's overwhelmingly drivers who are putting you in danger.

by chiph 5y ago

riffic 5y ago

an aside but can we please stop with using "accident" as the default term to describe mayhem involving motor vehicles? This simply dismisses the many risk factors as being simply inevitable even though there are more than likely preventable causes to address. --- Excerpt of "'Car Accident' Or 'Traffic Violence'? The Way We Talk About Crashes Is Evolving", Fonseca, 2020 (https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...): 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.

Sophistifunk 5y ago
Go away.
nsxwolf 5y ago
People are really trying to push this “traffic violence” thing lately and it feels like an organized campaign. Why?
- lmm 5y ago
  Because people gradually are shifting away from car-by-default and starting to notice how many people cars (or rather drivers) keep killing? (I started cycling to work about 4 years ago, around the time my city built some new cycle lanes, so of course I became a lot more conscious of how much reckless endangerment goes unpunished when it was happening to me). Because recent events have shown that we can make massive social changes to prevent deaths, so there's more hope that we could do the same for other major causes of death?
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    I know things in America are different, but as a lifelong pedestrian who owned a car for less than 2 years and walks all the time, I was endangered by reckless cyclists more often than by reckless drivers. If an asshole shifts his ass from car to bike, he will start riding on the pavement in places that are absolutely unsuitable for that, or on hiking trails that are absolutely unsuitable for that. And I say "he", because it was 100 per cent men. (I am a man too, for the record.) Gals seem to be quite a bit careful.
    - lmm 5y ago
      > I know things in America are different, but as a lifelong pedestrian who owned a car for less than 2 years and walks all the time, I was endangered by reckless cyclists more often than by reckless drivers. Bullshit. You notice reckless cyclists more because they're more unusual, that's all. The statistics for the rate at which pedestrians are killed or seriously injured show that it's overwhelmingly drivers who are putting you in danger.