4 ms·

> "I was late because I dropped my mug in the kitchen while wearing blue jeans." Nobody says the end of that because it's irrelevant to the explanation for late

> "I was late because I dropped my mug in the kitchen while wearing blue jeans." Nobody says the end of that because it's irrelevant to the explanation for lateness. That's kind of a straw man argument though. If you instead compare "I was in a car accident" with "I was in a mug dropping accident", you can see how bizarre it can be to use the passive version with a non-car incident. However, comparing "I drove into another car" with "I dropped a mug" and you can see that the active voice works better. (Possibly "I accidentally dropped a mug" could be used, but that's adding irrelevant information as it would be unusual for someone to purposefully drop a mug). The problem is that our society has over-embraced the car and has absorbed the NACC's use of language to de-personalise road traffic collisions on the car side of things.

sokoloff 3y ago
I am roughly equally delayed whether I'm the leading or trailing car in a rear-end collision. It is the fact that contact occurred (and the subsequent checking on other occupants and exchange of information) which has delayed me, not whether I was an active cause or passive victim of the occurrence. The person who was waiting on me was inconvenienced by my lateness and I'm explaining the proximate cause of my lateness. Whether I was at fault or not is, in the vast, vast majority of cases, not relevant or of interest to them.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Yes, but you could apply that reasoning to a coffee mug incident too. It would still be unusual to say "I was involved in a coffee mug containment breach" rather than "I dropped my coffee mug" or "The cat pushed my coffee mug off the table". It's a sign of motornormativity that we use different language for road traffic collisions as they have become so commonplace that they rarely even make the news. Everyone knows what a "car crash" is, but a "coffee mug crash" is not in common usage.

sokoloff 3y ago

I am roughly equally delayed whether I'm the leading or trailing car in a rear-end collision. It is the fact that contact occurred (and the subsequent checking on other occupants and exchange of information) which has delayed me, not whether I was an active cause or passive victim of the occurrence. The person who was waiting on me was inconvenienced by my lateness and I'm explaining the proximate cause of my lateness. Whether I was at fault or not is, in the vast, vast majority of cases, not relevant or of interest to them.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Yes, but you could apply that reasoning to a coffee mug incident too. It would still be unusual to say "I was involved in a coffee mug containment breach" rather than "I dropped my coffee mug" or "The cat pushed my coffee mug off the table". It's a sign of motornormativity that we use different language for road traffic collisions as they have become so commonplace that they rarely even make the news. Everyone knows what a "car crash" is, but a "coffee mug crash" is not in common usage.