<story><title>It’s No &apos;Accident:&apos; Advocates Want to Speak of Car &apos;Crashes&apos; Instead</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no-accident-advocates-want-to-speak-of-car-crashes-instead.html?_r=2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostromo</author><text>I feel like the U.S. is shifting too much to a blame culture.&lt;p&gt;For every bad or unfortunate incident, we call for blame and jail time and sometimes even public shaming.&lt;p&gt;And then we turn around and wonder why so many behaviors are criminalized and why so many people are in jail.&lt;p&gt;Yes, reckless driving shouldn&amp;#x27;t be ignored, but the article is arguing that accidents almost never happen, and that almost all accidents should lead to some sort of charges.</text></item><item><author>brianvan5155</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a supporter of a large transportation advocacy group that strongly believes in this shift in terminology. I believe in it personally, too.&lt;p&gt;Anyone who spends some time observing the news in New York - a city with a fairly low (relative) car ownership rate - would immediately notice how even the most shocking, violent, absurd automobile collisions are not just referred to as &amp;quot;accidents&amp;quot; but referred to as distinct forces of nature apart from their drivers. It&amp;#x27;s always the machine that did the colliding, the maiming and the killing... there is never any agency or responsibility given to the driver. (It&amp;#x27;s as if these cars just decided themselves to jump the curb, or race into oncoming traffic!) Flip it to a bicyclist or motorcyclist who caused a collision, and you&amp;#x27;ll see the language very precisely target the user, not the device.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a collision IS just an accident. But not all collisions are accidents.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really important that policy and public perception change to dismiss the exceptions in behavior and risk-taking that we assign to most drivers who aren&amp;#x27;t drunk. If a driver is caught clearly speeding, turning through occupied crosswalks, or coming out of an assigned lane in an uncontrolled fashion, and if the result is (almost predictably) a collision, it must be stated that the driver chose to violate traffic laws &amp;amp; take harmful risks, which is no accident at all. The converse of this is that a driver who doesn&amp;#x27;t take these risks may get into accidental collisions, but they won&amp;#x27;t be of the sort where the car ends upside down very far from the roadway in a 25mph speed limit area.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akgerber</author><text>Blame and jail time are essentially never applied, even in egregious cases, at least in New York City. Families have to fight for DAs to charge even unlicensed drivers that end up on the sidewalk:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;abc7ny.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;exclusive-family-outraged-after-driver-who-killed-daughter-not-charged&amp;#x2F;1369365&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;abc7ny.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;exclusive-family-outraged-after-drive...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, a lifetime driving ban is nearly impossible to impose in this country even though it would be an appropriate punishment for repeat dangerous drivers. Driving, despite being a privilege, is often treated as a right. A man who ran down and killed a little girl holding hands with her grandma in the crosswalk with the light (the police initially blamed the child on the word of the driver, and the DA dismissed the crash as an &amp;#x27;accident&amp;#x27;) only ended up with a driving ban due to a civil suit:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.streetsblog.org&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;civil-suit-compels-man-who-killed-ally-liao-to-stop-driving-for-5-years&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.streetsblog.org&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;civil-suit-compels-man...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;We clearly shouldn&amp;#x27;t blame, and especially shouldn&amp;#x27;t jail, people for every crash— but the current driving and policing culture in this country is profoundly far from that standard. Redesigning roadways so safe behavior is the default is a far better first step, but an abusive driver can figure out ways to make the best-designed piece of infrastructure dangerous.</text></comment>
<story><title>It’s No &apos;Accident:&apos; Advocates Want to Speak of Car &apos;Crashes&apos; Instead</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/science/its-no-accident-advocates-want-to-speak-of-car-crashes-instead.html?_r=2</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nostromo</author><text>I feel like the U.S. is shifting too much to a blame culture.&lt;p&gt;For every bad or unfortunate incident, we call for blame and jail time and sometimes even public shaming.&lt;p&gt;And then we turn around and wonder why so many behaviors are criminalized and why so many people are in jail.&lt;p&gt;Yes, reckless driving shouldn&amp;#x27;t be ignored, but the article is arguing that accidents almost never happen, and that almost all accidents should lead to some sort of charges.</text></item><item><author>brianvan5155</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a supporter of a large transportation advocacy group that strongly believes in this shift in terminology. I believe in it personally, too.&lt;p&gt;Anyone who spends some time observing the news in New York - a city with a fairly low (relative) car ownership rate - would immediately notice how even the most shocking, violent, absurd automobile collisions are not just referred to as &amp;quot;accidents&amp;quot; but referred to as distinct forces of nature apart from their drivers. It&amp;#x27;s always the machine that did the colliding, the maiming and the killing... there is never any agency or responsibility given to the driver. (It&amp;#x27;s as if these cars just decided themselves to jump the curb, or race into oncoming traffic!) Flip it to a bicyclist or motorcyclist who caused a collision, and you&amp;#x27;ll see the language very precisely target the user, not the device.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes a collision IS just an accident. But not all collisions are accidents.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really important that policy and public perception change to dismiss the exceptions in behavior and risk-taking that we assign to most drivers who aren&amp;#x27;t drunk. If a driver is caught clearly speeding, turning through occupied crosswalks, or coming out of an assigned lane in an uncontrolled fashion, and if the result is (almost predictably) a collision, it must be stated that the driver chose to violate traffic laws &amp;amp; take harmful risks, which is no accident at all. The converse of this is that a driver who doesn&amp;#x27;t take these risks may get into accidental collisions, but they won&amp;#x27;t be of the sort where the car ends upside down very far from the roadway in a 25mph speed limit area.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Eric_WVGG</author><text>Is it &amp;quot;blame culture&amp;quot; when some jerk falls asleep behind the wheel, unintentionally kill a pedestrian, and is let off the hook because he wasn&amp;#x27;t attempting murder?&lt;p&gt;Is it &amp;quot;blame culture&amp;quot; when someone hits-and-runs a cyclist, posts on Facebook that he hit some dumb-ass guy on a bicycle, that cyclist winds up dead, but hey, he wasn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;actually(&lt;/i&gt; trying to kill him, and gets off the hook with a $350 traffic fine?&lt;p&gt;This shit happens EVERY WEEK in New York City. Our cops would rather pretend like they&amp;#x27;re on The Wire or 24 hunting down drug lords and terrarists than doing basic traffic enforcement. They use terminology like &amp;quot;accidents&amp;quot; because a cabbie paralyzing or murdering a child is difficult to prosecute.&lt;p&gt;Semantics count. When we say &amp;quot;call it a crash, not an accident,&amp;quot; all we&amp;#x27;re saying is, &amp;quot;figure out whether the person driving the car is culpable before you let him off the hook.&amp;quot;</text></comment>