When a toddler spills his milk, it can be considered an accident. When a driver gets behind the wheel of a car and is texting instead of paying attention to the roadway and smashes into another vehicle or a pedestrian, it’s a crash.
The nonprofit organizations, Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets, created a site Crash Not Accident . It asks people to take a super simple pledge – to replace “accident” with a word that is more accurate: a crash.
As their campaign notes:
“Before the labor movement, factory owners would say “it was an accident” when American workers were injured in unsafe conditions.
Before the movement to combat drunk driving, intoxicated drivers would say “it was an accident” when they crashed their cars.
Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.
Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word “accident” today.”
Well said.