Who's at fault....Lorry driver, cyclist or the cycle lane designer?

[dawesome]

Listen to what the cops say, the ones who have to hose down the blood after RTCS:

On this holiday weekend in Canada, it is a given that cars will crash and people will die.​

But according to police, there will be no car accidents this Labour Day weekend.​

In police-speak, car crashes are not accidents. To describe them as such is considered inaccurate by traffic police and some others who are increasingly looking to the media to stop labelling the bad things that happen on our roads and highways as “accidents.”​

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Why is this so? Isn’t “car accident” the way most of us commonly think about motor vehicle collisions? Certainly after my own car was totalled last year, I thought many times about how thankful I was that my teenage son, who was driving, had walked away unscathed from this frightening “accident” in which another driver ran a red light and crashed into him.​

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I had given no thought whatsoever to this word usage until recently, when I was speaking to a North American-wide organization of police communications officers. In my talk, I mentioned some reader criticism of the Star’s coverage of a tragic “car accident” in which the Star had reported the driving records of the three youths killed.​

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At the end of the session, Sgt. Tim Burrows of Toronto Police’s traffic services communications office implored me to please stop using the word accident.​

Burrows argues with much passion and conviction, in person, on his blog and via Twitter, that there are no accidents on our roads.​

“A crash never happens without apparent cause or chance,” he says. “When we use the word accident, we give people an out from the responsibility that needs to be felt, as if what happened was some kind of ‘oops.’” It allows people to think that it was something unforeseen and unavoidable.​

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“Nothing on the road just all of a sudden happens,” ​

says Burrows, who has worked in traffic services for the past 15 years.​

“Collisions are predictable and preventable.”​

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/publiceditor/article/856651--english-is-a-car-crash-an-accident

A tree falling on the road may cause an accident. Virtually all RTCs involve driver error. No accident.

 

[Hip Priest]

When you've finished with that dictionary, forward it on to Sgt Burrows.

I'd also make the somewhat obvious point that a single member of Toronto's traffic police does not represent the views of 'the cops' as a whole.

 

[BentMikey]

I'm afraid you guys are wrong about accident being the right word. It's collision, and that's why police forces don't call them accidents any more. Perhaps you ought to show victims the same sort of respect, yes?

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Somehow the use of the word "accident" neutralises it, and that seems to me to be wrong, and the same reason why the emergency response crews use RTC, not RTA.

Someone who does a hit & run will be charged by the police with failing to stop after an accident, not an incident or collision.

I think there must be very few people who, in relation to road accidents, automatically interpret the phrase as implying the situation to being blame free. Certainly the the police and the courts have no trouble in holding people responsible for road accidents.



GC

 

[dawesome]

Someone who does a hit & run will be charged by the police with failing to stop after an accident, not an incident or collision.





GC

Sure. But the press, and witnesses, may use the word "accident" when it's nothing of the kind. Exactly as you've just done. Can you really defend the notion that firing a gun down a crowded street and killing someone is an "accident"? It's no different with vehicles, calling something an "accident" after a speeding, drunk or drugged driver kills someone is insulting the victim's families.

 

[Norm]

Sorry, Mickey, but that sort of faux-emotional bs is no better than quoting a Toronto policeman as validation for throwing out every English-language dictionary.

Calling it an accident shows no more disrespect to the victims than an inability to distinguish between intention and blame and shows considerably more respect than starting some political argument about the perfectly correct use of the word accident.

 

[BentMikey]

You're wrong, but you're too stubborn to admit it. Accident removes the possibility of blame, which is why police forces don't use it any more. You're in the minority.

Collision is the correct word, and you have yet to present a single reason why you can't use it.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

. Accident removes the possibility of blame, which is why police forces don't use it any more.

Hmmm...





GC

 

[gaz]

The emergency services use RTC for collisions between vehicles and RTI for incidences on the road not involving collisions (broken down cars etc...)

The police avoid using accident at first because they have not investigated what happened.

 

[Norm]

Police forces are not the majority, some police forces still use the word accident, intention and blame are separable for most levels of intelligence and there is no reason not to use it, other than accident being a more accurate word.

Which is one more reason than can be offered for not using the word accident, other than a continued aversion to English dictionaries. As said, people don't have an issue with 'collision', the frothing comes from those who struggle with the word accident.

 

[dawesome]

The head of the Metropolitan Police’s Road Death Investigation Unit has echoed the sentiment of many cyclists by issuing an appeal for motorists who cause death while driving to face tougher sentences, including life imprisonment in some circumstances.​

As many cases reported here on road.cc testify – we’ve highlighted some at the end of this article – all too often there is a perception that drivers benefit from a lenient approach from the courts, with a number of motorists found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving escaping custodial sentences.​

According to Detective Chief Inspector John Oldham of the Metropolitan Police believes that the families of victims of road traffic incidents, including pedestrians and other road users besides cyclists are resentful of what he calls “very small” sentences imposed in cases where there has been recklessness on the motorist’s part.​

He added that the common description of such incidents as “accidents” was often misleading, since human intervention had contributed to the tragic outcome.​

Currently, causing death by dangerous driving has a maximum punishment of 14 years in prison, although that is seldom imposed; Dennis Putz, the lorry driver convicted of killing Catriona Patel while drunk and on his mobile phone, who had a string of previous driving-related convictions, ​

received seven years in jail​

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“The sentences are very small, and the families hate that,” explained DCI Oldham. “In my particular world we get very upset by the word ‘accident’,” he added.​

“For families there is no accident about it. An accident on the road is the result of the decisions people make.”​

 

[gaz]

I recall something being said before that RTA was avoided by emergency services due to one person arguing in court that because the police officer has used accident in his notes, that it was such and he could not be blamed for it.
Let me see if I can find something to back that up.

 

[dawesome]

It's a loaded word, it reinforces the judicial "shrug" with which road deaths are often treated.

 

[Norm]

It's a loaded word, it implies a judicial "shrug" with which road deaths are often treated.

In your mind and, possibly, Mickey's mind, but not in my mind.

Then again, I will admit to being unduly influenced by things like dictionaries and accepted / common usage when considering the meanings of words, rather than prejudicial blinkers.

 

[Hip Priest]

I'm afraid you guys are wrong about accident being the right word. It's collision, and that's why police forces don't call them accidents any more. Perhaps you ought to show victims the same sort of respect, yes?

That is sentimental nonsense Mikey.

Mangling the English language makes you no more respectful to those who have lost their lives in accidents than I.