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> one of its driverless cars struck and dragged a pedestrian along the street in an accident in October last year Please don't call it an 'accident'... > “Acc

> one of its driverless cars struck and dragged a pedestrian along the street in an accident in October last year Please don't call it an 'accident'... > “Accident” tends to imply that no one is at fault — and when it’s used in the context of a traffic crash, it also can give the impression that what occurred is not that serious. https://www.helpinginjuredpeople.com/legal-blog/its-a-collision-not-an-accident-safety-experts-argue https://www.helpinginjuredpeople.com/legal-blog/its-a-collis...

timthorn 3y ago
Accident implies that it was unintentional, not that no one was to blame. If I drop my mug in the kitchen that's an accident too.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  I would prefer the term “malfunction” as it is more specific to self driving vehicles and avoids any unintentional association with human error.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  However, "accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it and "it's just one of those things that happens" when the vast majority of road traffic collisions are due to drivers not paying attention or following road traffic rules. There's also a major problem with RTC reporting in general in that reporters often refer just to the vehicle, such as "car hit a wall", or "car plows through pedestrians" which depersonalises it and again makes it seem as though there's nothing we can do about these kinds of occurrences. There's reporting guidelines here: https://www.rc-rg.com/ https://www.rc-rg.com/
  - timthorn 3y ago
    The guidelines you link to are produced by the Active Travel Academy, a body with an explicit goal of reducing car use. The Orwellian tactic of first controlling the language has been well learned.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      It's curious that you should think that, when the aim of the language is to reduce bias and put the reporting on a neutral basis. In terms of Orwellian control of language, you'd be better off looking at the behaviour of the automotive industry of the 1930s: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history It's also notable just how much the media industries are influenced by car manufacturers due to their high advertising spend (e.g. "stop publishing articles about active travel or we'll stop our advertising"). Reducing car use is an entirely logical goal as getting people to walk for short journeys can drastically improve the health of a nation as well as improving the air quality and drastically reducing congestion - it literally helps everyone (except for those involved with selling/fixing cars).
      - rcxdude 3y ago
        One man's neutral is another's bias. I don't think you get to claim that your preferred choice of words intended to guide the thinking about something is fundamentally more neutral than any other: it just reflects your point of view better (whether this point of view is more accurate or useful is a seperate question entirely). Put another way: arguing about the terms and the implications of using one kind of language or another over an issue is effectively equivilent to just arguing about the actual issue, just abstracted, usually in a not very useful way.
        ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        There's most definitely words which carry connotations with them. However, I cannot think of any particular connotation that comes with "collision" and thus I believe it to be entirely neutral. Can you think of any bias that comes with using "collision"? What specific part of the guidelines do you think are biased or misleading? The main thrust of the guidelines is to improve accurate reporting. Also, they aim to have consistent reporting so that the type of language used for different road users should be the same. I don't really see how asking for consistency is the same as being biased.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > “accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it I don’t personally get that implication from the word. Whether I drop and break my coffee mug or rear-end someone at a traffic light, it’s an accident and I’m responsible for it.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      The fact that you are comparing a fumble of a mug and rear-ending someone suggests to me that you have internalised that implication that RTCs "just happen". There's certain behaviour that leads to rear-ending someone - typically lack of awareness/attentiveness rather than it being a momentary loss of control. It's predictable that e.g. someone using a phone whilst driving will be far more likely to cause a RTC whereas the coffee mug dropping isn't really associated with any particular behaviour. What I mean is that mug dropping is not really something that we can do anything about, but ensuring that drivers obey traffic laws and are attentive is definitely something that can be influenced (e.g. by police or by public messaging).
      - rcxdude 3y ago
        pretty much all your arguments about the rear ending apply to the mug as well (I think we all know someone who drops/damages objects more often than most, and you can usually link said instances to a lapse of attention). The only difference is the severity of the outcome and thus the importance of avoiding behaviours which increase the risk of it occuring.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        I strongly believe that dropped coffee mugs are also positively correlated with lack of awareness/attentiveness. It seems weird to contemplate that they would be uncorrelated or negatively correlated. (I would expect that phone usage also positively correlates as a major category/source of distraction.) Same is true of rear-end collisions/accidents/unscheduled bumper modifications.
        oceanplexian 3y ago
tialaramex 3y ago
They're accidents because the alternative is that they're purposeful and we have an entirely separate criminal framework for that. The "expert" cited is a psychologist, not a linguist, and in particular a psychologist who apparently lost his father in such an accident. This is about choosing more emotional language in the hope that somehow this magically fixes a societal problem, which it won't. When we re-frame this so that we're emphasising blaming the driver, we go back to the era when nothing was improved because well - it's just the driver's fault, so if they're alive we use retributive justice and if not the problem has solved itself. That simply does not work. We need to identify how we can break the chain because these are accidents, there is no intelligent actor purposefully causing them so such interventions can be effective. Example: Use of road design to slow traffic => Cars and trucks move more slowly, pedestrians are less likely to be struck by traffic and less likely to die if hit. That would do nothing if this was purposeful, if there was intent, but there isn't and so European nations which use narrower roads to slow traffic see significant reductions in deaths and injuries.
- stefan_ 3y ago
  This is an odd point to try to argue in the context of driverless cars. Of course the behaviour is fully intentional in the sense that the car will act the same way again when presented with similar circumstances. All flaws in driverless cars are systematic and repeating flaws, not random human driver behaviour.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    But even here, this wasn't the intent this is just what happened. Nobody was like "You know what we ought to do? Make sure we cause more injuries to a person who was knocked down" they just designed this software without considering this scenario and so there's a significant improvement to make here. Lots of causes of human accidents are systemic and repeatable, but that doesn't make them intentional. Take trips and falls for example, it's possible for a human to just get super unlucky and trip over for essentially no reason, but in most cases there are repeatable causes, we can fix those causes and reduce how often trips and falls occur, but the trips and falls were accidents, it's not helpful to pretend that's the wrong word.
infecto 3y ago
I don't really hold the opinion of an ambulance chaser lawyer high. Perhaps there should be a change for driverless cars but I never thought accident implies no fault, I don't believe courts think of it as no fault either. Accident to me implies that the event was not intended regardless of fault. Thats why usually you will see things like no-fault accident or at-fault accident.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
If it wasn’t an accident, then it was planned and pre meditated. Accident definitely have fault in the American legal framework.

timthorn 3y ago

Accident implies that it was unintentional, not that no one was to blame. If I drop my mug in the kitchen that's an accident too.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
I would prefer the term “malfunction” as it is more specific to self driving vehicles and avoids any unintentional association with human error.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
However, "accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it and "it's just one of those things that happens" when the vast majority of road traffic collisions are due to drivers not paying attention or following road traffic rules. There's also a major problem with RTC reporting in general in that reporters often refer just to the vehicle, such as "car hit a wall", or "car plows through pedestrians" which depersonalises it and again makes it seem as though there's nothing we can do about these kinds of occurrences. There's reporting guidelines here: https://www.rc-rg.com/ https://www.rc-rg.com/
- timthorn 3y ago
  The guidelines you link to are produced by the Active Travel Academy, a body with an explicit goal of reducing car use. The Orwellian tactic of first controlling the language has been well learned.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    It's curious that you should think that, when the aim of the language is to reduce bias and put the reporting on a neutral basis. In terms of Orwellian control of language, you'd be better off looking at the behaviour of the automotive industry of the 1930s: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history It's also notable just how much the media industries are influenced by car manufacturers due to their high advertising spend (e.g. "stop publishing articles about active travel or we'll stop our advertising"). Reducing car use is an entirely logical goal as getting people to walk for short journeys can drastically improve the health of a nation as well as improving the air quality and drastically reducing congestion - it literally helps everyone (except for those involved with selling/fixing cars).
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      One man's neutral is another's bias. I don't think you get to claim that your preferred choice of words intended to guide the thinking about something is fundamentally more neutral than any other: it just reflects your point of view better (whether this point of view is more accurate or useful is a seperate question entirely). Put another way: arguing about the terms and the implications of using one kind of language or another over an issue is effectively equivilent to just arguing about the actual issue, just abstracted, usually in a not very useful way.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        There's most definitely words which carry connotations with them. However, I cannot think of any particular connotation that comes with "collision" and thus I believe it to be entirely neutral. Can you think of any bias that comes with using "collision"? What specific part of the guidelines do you think are biased or misleading? The main thrust of the guidelines is to improve accurate reporting. Also, they aim to have consistent reporting so that the type of language used for different road users should be the same. I don't really see how asking for consistency is the same as being biased.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > “accident" also implies that no-one is responsible for it I don’t personally get that implication from the word. Whether I drop and break my coffee mug or rear-end someone at a traffic light, it’s an accident and I’m responsible for it.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    The fact that you are comparing a fumble of a mug and rear-ending someone suggests to me that you have internalised that implication that RTCs "just happen". There's certain behaviour that leads to rear-ending someone - typically lack of awareness/attentiveness rather than it being a momentary loss of control. It's predictable that e.g. someone using a phone whilst driving will be far more likely to cause a RTC whereas the coffee mug dropping isn't really associated with any particular behaviour. What I mean is that mug dropping is not really something that we can do anything about, but ensuring that drivers obey traffic laws and are attentive is definitely something that can be influenced (e.g. by police or by public messaging).
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      pretty much all your arguments about the rear ending apply to the mug as well (I think we all know someone who drops/damages objects more often than most, and you can usually link said instances to a lapse of attention). The only difference is the severity of the outcome and thus the importance of avoiding behaviours which increase the risk of it occuring.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      I strongly believe that dropped coffee mugs are also positively correlated with lack of awareness/attentiveness. It seems weird to contemplate that they would be uncorrelated or negatively correlated. (I would expect that phone usage also positively correlates as a major category/source of distraction.) Same is true of rear-end collisions/accidents/unscheduled bumper modifications.
      - oceanplexian 3y ago

tialaramex 3y ago

They're accidents because the alternative is that they're purposeful and we have an entirely separate criminal framework for that. The "expert" cited is a psychologist, not a linguist, and in particular a psychologist who apparently lost his father in such an accident. This is about choosing more emotional language in the hope that somehow this magically fixes a societal problem, which it won't. When we re-frame this so that we're emphasising blaming the driver, we go back to the era when nothing was improved because well - it's just the driver's fault, so if they're alive we use retributive justice and if not the problem has solved itself. That simply does not work. We need to identify how we can break the chain because these are accidents, there is no intelligent actor purposefully causing them so such interventions can be effective. Example: Use of road design to slow traffic => Cars and trucks move more slowly, pedestrians are less likely to be struck by traffic and less likely to die if hit. That would do nothing if this was purposeful, if there was intent, but there isn't and so European nations which use narrower roads to slow traffic see significant reductions in deaths and injuries.

stefan_ 3y ago
This is an odd point to try to argue in the context of driverless cars. Of course the behaviour is fully intentional in the sense that the car will act the same way again when presented with similar circumstances. All flaws in driverless cars are systematic and repeating flaws, not random human driver behaviour.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  But even here, this wasn't the intent this is just what happened. Nobody was like "You know what we ought to do? Make sure we cause more injuries to a person who was knocked down" they just designed this software without considering this scenario and so there's a significant improvement to make here. Lots of causes of human accidents are systemic and repeatable, but that doesn't make them intentional. Take trips and falls for example, it's possible for a human to just get super unlucky and trip over for essentially no reason, but in most cases there are repeatable causes, we can fix those causes and reduce how often trips and falls occur, but the trips and falls were accidents, it's not helpful to pretend that's the wrong word.

infecto 3y ago

I don't really hold the opinion of an ambulance chaser lawyer high. Perhaps there should be a change for driverless cars but I never thought accident implies no fault, I don't believe courts think of it as no fault either. Accident to me implies that the event was not intended regardless of fault. Thats why usually you will see things like no-fault accident or at-fault accident.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

If it wasn’t an accident, then it was planned and pre meditated. Accident definitely have fault in the American legal framework.