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The problem with using "accident" as the default term is that it preempts any evidence-finding, implying that it was nobody's fault. If someone shoots their gun

The problem with using "accident" as the default term is that it preempts any evidence-finding, implying that it was nobody's fault. If someone shoots their gun randomly and someone gets hurt by just being there, nobody will call it an "accident", but somehow if the weapon is a car, the driver gets the benefit of the doubt regardless of the facts.

dash2 5y ago
Of course if there is evidence that the driver deliberately tried to kill someone, nobody will call it an accident. I would imagine that the vast majority of car deaths are indeed accidental, not murders. This seems to contrast with the situation of gun deaths. No?
- dfxm12 5y ago
  I'm not sure. I read a lot of gun violence reporting like "person a was struck by a bullet and later died due to complications" vs "gunman shot and killed person a". It's kinda the same thing. I would make no assumptions about if car accidents are accidental (which for some reason seems to be the default) or not - and that's more or less the point of the article.
  - ihaveajob 5y ago
    The fact that even making a similar argument to mine, you still say "if car accidents are accidental" is very telling of how ingrained this phrase has become. (Not to pick on you, I just find it amusing.)
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      I don't think this is coincidental: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28841388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28841388 I was trying to amusingly challenge the reader to separate the two meanings of accident (car crash and something that happened unintentionally) just like most writing about crashes tries to get the reader to conflate them. :)
- riffic 5y ago
  There are degrees of intention (Fonseca, 2020). Most people are quite deliberate about the speed they choose to drive, or the level of care they put into the act of operating a vehicle. City planners and engineers are intentional about what they choose to build or not build. This is a shaky foundation of an argument IMO. https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  There's a few really busy streets in my neighborhood where people regularly go 10-20 MPH over the speed limit. Not surprisingly, there are quite a few hit-and-runs on those streets. While it's probably the case that the folks who are speeding are just being selfish ("I want to minimize my time on the road") but they are doing so at the cost of safety. The equivalent w/r/t guns might be that someone was firing their gun willy-nilly, with little regard to their surroundings. If someone died in such a scenario, yes, it would have been an "accident" but we would also assign fault to the shooter (gross negligence, manslaughter, I am not a lawyer so I don't know the exact terminology). The reality is that cars are EXTREMELY dangerous and yet Americans don't tend to think of them that way, and we definitely don't drive them (as a society) with that mindset.
  - dash2 5y ago
    Speeding is bad, but it is obviously much less dangerous than firing a gun at random in public.
- ihaveajob 5y ago
  The main point is that "accident" implicitly absolves the driver of fault, before any evidence is examined. If you're driving 100MPH in a local street, you may not be intentionally trying to harm anyone, but if you do, the result can hardly be called an accident.

dash2 5y ago

Of course if there is evidence that the driver deliberately tried to kill someone, nobody will call it an accident. I would imagine that the vast majority of car deaths are indeed accidental, not murders. This seems to contrast with the situation of gun deaths. No?

dfxm12 5y ago
I'm not sure. I read a lot of gun violence reporting like "person a was struck by a bullet and later died due to complications" vs "gunman shot and killed person a". It's kinda the same thing. I would make no assumptions about if car accidents are accidental (which for some reason seems to be the default) or not - and that's more or less the point of the article.
- ihaveajob 5y ago
  The fact that even making a similar argument to mine, you still say "if car accidents are accidental" is very telling of how ingrained this phrase has become. (Not to pick on you, I just find it amusing.)
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    I don't think this is coincidental: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28841388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28841388 I was trying to amusingly challenge the reader to separate the two meanings of accident (car crash and something that happened unintentionally) just like most writing about crashes tries to get the reader to conflate them. :)
riffic 5y ago
There are degrees of intention (Fonseca, 2020). Most people are quite deliberate about the speed they choose to drive, or the level of care they put into the act of operating a vehicle. City planners and engineers are intentional about what they choose to build or not build. This is a shaky foundation of an argument IMO. https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...
what_is_orcas 5y ago
There's a few really busy streets in my neighborhood where people regularly go 10-20 MPH over the speed limit. Not surprisingly, there are quite a few hit-and-runs on those streets. While it's probably the case that the folks who are speeding are just being selfish ("I want to minimize my time on the road") but they are doing so at the cost of safety. The equivalent w/r/t guns might be that someone was firing their gun willy-nilly, with little regard to their surroundings. If someone died in such a scenario, yes, it would have been an "accident" but we would also assign fault to the shooter (gross negligence, manslaughter, I am not a lawyer so I don't know the exact terminology). The reality is that cars are EXTREMELY dangerous and yet Americans don't tend to think of them that way, and we definitely don't drive them (as a society) with that mindset.
- dash2 5y ago
  Speeding is bad, but it is obviously much less dangerous than firing a gun at random in public.
ihaveajob 5y ago
The main point is that "accident" implicitly absolves the driver of fault, before any evidence is examined. If you're driving 100MPH in a local street, you may not be intentionally trying to harm anyone, but if you do, the result can hardly be called an accident.