MDOT tells reporters: Don't call accidents accidents

The Michigan Department of Transportation has a message to deliver regarding vehicle crashes.

“Accidents are not coincidences, they are preventable. Please use ‘accident’ instead of ‘accident’ when reporting.”

MDOT press releases in recent weeks have carried this advice to reporters.

MDOT spokesman Jeff Cranson, who has focused on this use of language for years, said the idea to start including it in MDOT press releases came fairly recently, based on email correspondence with colleagues in Colorado.

Cranson saw the recommendations being used there and thought it would be a good way to get the message to Michigan, too.

This may indicate a change in approach, but the message itself is not a new one for MDOT.

“This is something we’ve been working on for a long time,” Cranson said. “This seems like a fine distinction, but it’s not.”

Cranson wants to emphasize that words matter and can influence how we perceive and respond to an event, which in this case is tragically common. The direct conversation seems necessary as the number of people killed on U.S. roads is set to surpass 40,000 by 2023, according to federal data.

Wrecks ‘result of systematic failures in policy’

One MDOT web page dedicated to the topic states: “When we call something an ‘accident,’ it means that no one is at fault and no one, including the driver, is responsible for the outcome. “The term ‘collision,’ on the other hand, is more specific in terms of the outcome of the action, without the implication of irrepressibility.”

In a 2019 podcast, Cranson spoke with Lloyd Brown, then the communications director for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Brown explained that when we call a preventable accident an accident, we let someone off the hook.

It can be argued that some accidents may be impossible to avoid when a medical emergency occurs. But many of these involve human error, Cranson said. It may be difficult to avoid a deer running across the road, but was the driver speeding?

Author Kea Wilson notes: “The term car ‘crash’ implies that fatal crashes are entirely the result of individual drivers’ unintentional mistakes, rather than the result of systemic policy failures that we can and must address.” Wilson’s thoughts on the matter emerged in April. A post on Streetsblog USAReporting the needs of the non-driving public.

In 2016, the Associated Press added an entry on the subject to the AP Stylebook, the lengthy reference guide for journalists seeking the official word on everything from word choice to punctuation rules. This wasn’t a complete vindication for those who wanted to remove “accident” from the reporters’ lexicon, but it did acknowledge the need for nuance.

We do not call plane crashes ‘accidents’

“Accident, impact” is “generally acceptable for automobile and other collisions and accidents,” the Stylebook advises. But avoid accident when negligence is alleged or proven; this may be read by some as a term that exonerates the person responsible. In such cases, use collision, crash, or other terms.”

For some, concerns about the use of the term “accident” have been long-standing. The federal government’s then-deputy motor vehicle administrator, George Reagle, emphasized in a post dated September 18, 1997 that “the crash was not an accident”:

“The concept of ‘accident’ is contrary to the use of all necessary resources to combat the huge problem of highway collisions. “The use of the word ‘accident’ reinforces the idea that the resulting damage and injuries are inevitable.”

A 2019 study on the impact of news coverage in shaping perceptions of blame and preferred solutions found that “editorial patterns in car crash news influence people’s interpretations of what happened and what to do about it.”

A. 2015 Vox article It points out not only that we make an odd distinction even between modes of transportation (we won’t use “plane crash,” for example), but also that the use of the word “accident” to describe car crashes is hardly accidental.

According to the article, the auto industry has helped change the way we view accidents by influencing news coverage; “Early reports of crashes in the 1910s and 1920s portrayed vehicles as dangerous killing machines—and their violent collisions were rarely called accidents,” according to the article.

What began as an industry effort to place blame for vehicle crashes on pedestrians led to a shift in general usage, with crash “becoming the most common way to describe collisions,” the article said.

This effort had staying power. Today, although accidents are not as common in the news, it is not uncommon to hear the phrase “accident” used in conversation to describe accidents.

Cranson said he believed some progress had been made on the issue, but admitted: “I still cringe when I see it in some stories.”

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: [email protected]. Subscribe. Send a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

Wrecks ‘result of systematic failures in policy’

We do not call plane crashes ‘accidents’

Related Posts