Colin Ettinger from RoadPeace asks when will we stop using the word “accident” in the context of collisions on the roads.
RoadPeace is a national charity supporting road crash victims. It’s members are victims or bereaved family members. This year celebrates RoadPeace’s 30th anniversary. For much of that time it’s members have been campaigning for the word “accident” to be dropped. Why is this? “Accident” suggests something unintentional, and beyond control. As a RoadPeace member has said, “it is a description with an excuse embedded within it”. The phrase “it was just an accident” serves both as a claim of innocence and as an exoneration. Use of the term “accident” is inappropriate until all the facts of the case are known
Alternative words like “crash” or “collision” do not presume guilt or culpability. They avoid any value judgement and can apply equally to collisions caused by animals running out on the road, a drink driver speeding.
“Accident” is even less appropriate for an event which results in conviction, especially those incurring custodial sentences. Dangerous driving convictions require that the standard of driving was far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver, such as the use of highly inappropriate speed, deliberate disregard of traffic lights using a vehicle with a dangerous defect. In these circumstances, while collisions may not be intentional, calling them “accident” is clearly inappropriate.
Those who have been bereaved or severely injured by lawbreaking drivers do not want to hear the incident being described in the same terms as a milk spillage. Many RoadPeace members take deep offence at road deaths being called “accidents”
Crashes have causes and contributory factors, “accidents” have excuses. Using “accident” encourages a sense of fatalism, with fewer sources invested in prevention efforts as a result. It is this concern that explains much of the worldwide support for this change in terminology.
It is well known that the Police do not use the word “accident”. It is also worthwhile quoting from other organisations
“We recognise the distress that can be caused to victims and their families when cases of bad driving are referred to as “accidents”. We will not use this term. We will use the term “collision” to refer to all bad driving cases that involve death or serious injury
CPS, Prosecuting Bad Drivers Policy (2007)
Death and injury on the world’s roads is arguably the single most neglected human development challenge. The vocabulary of the road traffic injury epidemic helps to explain the neglect. While child deaths from, say malaria, are viewed as avoidable tragedies that can be stopped through government action, road traffic deaths and injuries are widely perceived as “accidents” – unpredictable events happening on a random basis to people who have the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Doctor Kevin Watkins, The Missing Link: Road Traffic Injuries and the Millennium Development Goals, Commission for Global Road Safety (2011)
For many years safety officials and public health authorities have discouraged the use of the word “accident” when it refers to injuries or the events that produced them. An accident is often understood to be unpredictable – a chance occurrence or an “act of God” – and therefore unavoidable. However, most injuries in their precipitating events are predictable and preventable. That is why the BMJ has decided to ban the word accident”
Ronald Davies and Barry Pless, BMJ bans “accidents”. Accidents are not unpredictable (2001)
The concept of “accident” works against bringing all the appropriate resources to bear on the enormous problem of motor vehicle collisions. Continuous use of “accident” fosters the idea that the resulting injuries are an unavoidable part of life. Within the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (U.S.-based EOT/NHTSA) the word “accident” will no longer be used in materials published and distributed by the agency. In addition, NHTSA is no longer using “accidents” in speeches or other public remarks, in communication with the news media, individuals or groups in the public or private sector.
US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (1997)
So we ask all lawyers involved in personal injury work, wherever possible, please not use “accident, use “crash”/”incident”/”collision/” instead
I would like to thank RoadPeace for its assistance in preparing this article
Colin Ettinger is an Honorary Member, Patron, and Chair of the Knowledge Share Group – RoadPeace. He is also an Emeritus Senior Fellow, Past President and Life Member of APIL
Updated on: 28 February 2024