The excellent @pluralistic highlighted this Wired article from 2015 regarding car “accidents”. The author’s story mirrors our own loss of our three year old daughter playing in front of our house in 2012. There needs to be greater accountability for people using automobiles.
https://www.wired.com/2015/10/stop-calling-daughters-death-car-accident/
@thegaffer @pluralistic The shooting sports community has been working for years to do something similar, replacing the term "accidental discharge" with "negligent discharge" to reflect the fact that barring extremely rare mechanical malfunctions, guns don't just go off on their own.
If it fires without you intending, it's because you were doing something stupid and dangerous like having it loaded when you shouldn't have, leaving your finger on the trigger, etc.
So just like with a significant number of car crashes, it's not an accident it's negligent behavior on the part of the operator. This sort of terminology should become more prevalent in general.
@eamon @azonenberg @thegaffer @pluralistic
Thats genuinely the preferred policy of the British Emergency Services (Fire, Police and Ambulance), they always refer to a road traffic collision or incident rather than an "accident" (as /someone/ did something incorrect to make a vehicle occupy the same space as another (or another solid object, or simply ran off the road)
@mjr @vfrmedia @eamon @azonenberg @thegaffer @pluralistic TBF unless the pedestrian jumped through the an open window of the car the driver didn't come into contact with them. Until recently there was always the understanding that a car was controlled by a human driver who is responsible for damage or injury caused by a vehicle in their control along with the roadworthiness of said vehicle. Cars, by themselves, are inanimate objects with no will of their own.
I guess it also paints a clearer picture of events as "driver" is a person controlling a vehicle. This could be as small as a unicycle or as large as a container ship. I'm not sure of the legal definition of driver though.
@securedllama @mjr @eamon @azonenberg @thegaffer @pluralistic
for the UK Road Traffic Act 1988 a driver is the person (or persons) controlling the vehicle (a specialist large vehicle might have one person steering and another operating other controls, there's also the case of someone supervising a learner driver on L plates (who needs to be not just a qualified driver but sober and not using their mobile phone!)
If a parked car was left off the handbrake, rolled away and hit a pedestrian then the person who would normally be driving it would be liable (although it might be a different charge than a moving traffic offence).
(Self driving cars are not yet authorised for use in the UK, the legislation is still being debated in Parliament)
The Gaffer
Andrew Zonenberg
Éamon Ryan 
aprilfollies
Piers Cawley
DJ Sexy Fresh
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
MJ Ray
Piranhallama
Landa 