This is really a big step in my opinion, as language choices can shape opinions, as the article states “a ‘significant step forward’ in recognizing the preventable nature of road collisions.”
He said: “Most crashes are not ‘accidents’ but are avoidable, normally by drivers and other road users paying more attention.”
And to take it a step further, some blame should be cast on the peoole who design roads to be as dangerous as they are.
You can design a road that effectively forces drivers to both pay attention and drive more slowly.
But since roads aren’t designed with safety in mind, you get far too many "accidents"🙄
“Collision” is the word. While most of them aren’t intentional, very few of them are unavoidable. See, e.g., the lady who passed me on a double yellow blind curve on a 25mph residential road in front of a school, only to stop next to me at the red light 50ft down the street
“Why don’t we use the word accident again?”
“Because accident implies there’s no-one to blame.”
Accident also requires that you are making a good faith attempt to prevent said accident
I got into an “on purpose”
Casually everybody will obviously carry on saying “accident” for now, but I wonder how fast it will filter down from official language to every day language. Would be interesting to watch the trend over the next few decades. Like how people still say “road tax”.
Good. There is nothing accidental about the horrible way people drive and the utter disregard for other’s lives that they display behind the wheel. Cars are a horrible way of getting around but people’s bad driving makes things so much worse than they need to be.
My dad and I have jokingly been calling them “intentionals” for a while now.
in UK
Now they call it an “oopsie whoopsie automobiley dealy”
The official new word is “collision”.
Also “accident” is being phased out in recognition of the fact that crashes should be prevented, not considered an unavoidable or acceptable downside of automobile use.
Accident implies there is no culpability.
I think the poster was making a joke based on this image (or similar ones):
The official new word is “collision”.
Oopsie, I just had a collision in my underwear.
While I suspect you’re just trying to be funny, this could be read as an attempt to trivialize car-related fatalities by comparing automobile accidents to bowel malfunctions.
People don’t usually die from pissing themselves.
Edit: I’m not trying to shit on anyone’s fun, but I leave comments like this because I don’t like the idea of some hypothetical lurker even accidentally walking away with misinterpretations.
It’s like how you can make fun of bigots using sarcasm, but sometimes they just take you seriously, and walk away thinking you’re one of them. I hate when that happens, and sometimes you wont even know if it did.
It’s not trying when you nail it.
Ok, then it’s succeeding at two things.
I wasn’t commenting on the comedic merit.
You’re right but it’s very clearly just a thread where everyone shits on the UK
Shites*
That doesn’t mean people who’d read that comment and go “yeah, you tell em” won’t wander in.
They’d not even have to interact to walk away thinking they got their word in, and that others agree with them.
You’re right, but it comes off as finger wagging/buzzkill
There goes the automobile industry’s last bits of influence on the public at minimizing the mechanical death machines
/s for those browsing all
No sarcasm
Huh? You are genuinely claiming that the word “accident” was the only remaining lever capital had to influence the public??
In your head, is the whole country Mr Bean?
No, there’s also the violent mobs with no teeth but only literally, the queen(?) and mold
So long as you have a balanced and fair view
PS. Its spelt mould, ignorant colonist
Well, there are Mrs Beans too, I’m sure.
The police in the UK have called them “road traffic incidents” for at least 15 years now
Incident still sounds too close to accident. I vote we call it “consequences”.
negligence is a good word
Yeah I like that, and then we can grade the consequences as Code Brown, Code Yellow, Code Red.
