"Of all the words in the street safety advocate’s vernacular, perhaps the term “traffic violence” provokes the most powerful emotions. For many, that emotion is simple gratitude, that the tens of thousands of preventable deaths that occur in the traffic realm every year have been recognized, in this small way, for the violence that it is. For others, it’s confusion about the connotation of intentional harm that creeps in when we remove the word "accident" from our vocabulary — or even rage that it provokes in people who say we are not presuming innocence of every driver involved in all car crashes by default.
Since at least 2013, Streetsblog has been using the term “traffic violence” to describe the epidemic of death and serious injuries that has raged on our roadways since the advent of the automobile. (The comment above is from one of former Streetsblog USA edtior Angie Schmitt’s articles, which is the first instance of the term we could find, though she said she did not coin it.) But the broader street safety advocacy community didn’t seize upon the phrase until around 2016, and even today, it’s not in widespread usage beyond a few wonky corners of Twitter. If you google “what is traffic violence,” the top hits will include one fantastic but locally focused article from the LAist, an advertorial from a personal injury law firm, and some guy’s private blog post, which questions whether the term is unnecessarily divisive:"
Re:
"Their basic argument is that longtime use of the word "accident" minimizes the prevalence and seriousness, and creates a perception block about who is responsible when a driver kills someone with their car. The word "accident" suggests nothing could have been done to predict or prevent the collision."
I do think there is a ideological/political gap between those who are not initiated to a pruned language when they are given a word such as "violence" as opposed to "accident." A subculture of twitter or region that is bike tolerant such as NY with great public transportation (by U.S. standards, at least) cannot erase its language entirely- it is implicitly suggesting. Most people reading an easy 160 character tweet often spend little time examining what the driver could see (a foggy day, driving too fast for conditions or slow but still not enough to see the pedestrian, and is not the best place to examine the culpability)
Everyone needs to adopt a Lagrange Point, where one does not gravitate towards a victimization or perpetrator assumption. The most neutral word is collision (I wouldn't even suggest crash, because that also implies an action- the collision is the most Newtonian-neutral :)
My disagreement with parts of the Open Street Blog is this:
One of the issues is that the right of way in suburbs is very limited, especially on stroads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad Thus the carless have very few places to walk without jaywalking in certain cases- less/not acceptable in places like a city- but also the city doesn't like bikes on the sidewalk, because it's considered dangerous to the most vulnerable pedestrians- I once got a loudspeaker warning in 2007 for riding on the sidewalk in Uptown, Chicago). That said, without dedicated bike lanes with a concrete divider, biking isn't going to be safer on the side of the road since cars frequently try to weave in and out to pass someone. Developing something like a new road (assuming new roads are still being built), suggests they need bike lanes designed from the ground up/start, rather than a retroactive path.
The terms get somehow equated, as if they are using the transitive property of equality a=b and b=c, therefore a = c, but in this case, it's like thinking "a~b~c" therefore a~c, but a is quite different from c. For example if a were a 0.49 and b were 0.99 and c were 1.49, one could say a & b are <1 therefore are similar, and b ~ c because it's +/-0.50 from b, therefore c ~ a, but for all we know, a could be the freezing point of a liquid and c could be the sublimation or vaporization point of b. Which is probably why they admit the person can be not guilty- apparently preferring the legal term as opposed to innocent. It's likely a lawyer wrote that page.
Transitive Property of Equality - Definition & Examples
I got my first driver's license at 21. My mentality at the time- which was fine- was that I lived on campus, and I had no need for a car- therefore all my needs were met by bus and trains. That was nearly 20 years ago. Thus when I graduated, I still took trains and busses to work, but less so by the time I was 30, when I moved away from a suburb with trains.
https://micromobility.substack.com/ I subscribe to this blog- I took a sociology course at a community college in 2009, remembering an instructor who said that, in Europe, licenses may be taken away for accidents, but the u.s places a lot of emphasis on freedom, thus are less likely to take away someone's license in the event of a crash- perhaps encouraging people to have jobs. Maybe that's why unemployment is higher over there in some countries? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/
Of course, Europe has more rail and walkable cities, so that shouldn't be an issue except maybe for the countryside.
This article recently actually gives credence to the need for pedestrian safety, but mainly because some SUVs are getting way too big: https://apnews.com/article/us-pedestrian-safety-rule-suvs-pickup-trucks-8ab66c3416dcb91484ec502d6e114ad1 (not everyone needs to haul that much, but marketing still advertises that 20 year old guy ought to buy an F-150, as if they work on a farm or construction site...) I mean fine if they do, but everyone wants a larger truck because they are also playing a zero sum game with impact absorption from collisions and larger crumple zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone#Low_speed_impact_absorption
Yeah, "pedestrian injuries" are a Problem, for sure, but not a Crisis.
I can see how this conversation arises.
From: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/05/03/what-traffic-violence-is-and-why-we-need-to-talk-about-it
"Of all the words in the street safety advocate’s vernacular, perhaps the term “traffic violence” provokes the most powerful emotions. For many, that emotion is simple gratitude, that the tens of thousands of preventable deaths that occur in the traffic realm every year have been recognized, in this small way, for the violence that it is. For others, it’s confusion about the connotation of intentional harm that creeps in when we remove the word "accident" from our vocabulary — or even rage that it provokes in people who say we are not presuming innocence of every driver involved in all car crashes by default.
Since at least 2013, Streetsblog has been using the term “traffic violence” to describe the epidemic of death and serious injuries that has raged on our roadways since the advent of the automobile. (The comment above is from one of former Streetsblog USA edtior Angie Schmitt’s articles, which is the first instance of the term we could find, though she said she did not coin it.) But the broader street safety advocacy community didn’t seize upon the phrase until around 2016, and even today, it’s not in widespread usage beyond a few wonky corners of Twitter. If you google “what is traffic violence,” the top hits will include one fantastic but locally focused article from the LAist, an advertorial from a personal injury law firm, and some guy’s private blog post, which questions whether the term is unnecessarily divisive:"
Re:
"Their basic argument is that longtime use of the word "accident" minimizes the prevalence and seriousness, and creates a perception block about who is responsible when a driver kills someone with their car. The word "accident" suggests nothing could have been done to predict or prevent the collision."
I do think there is a ideological/political gap between those who are not initiated to a pruned language when they are given a word such as "violence" as opposed to "accident." A subculture of twitter or region that is bike tolerant such as NY with great public transportation (by U.S. standards, at least) cannot erase its language entirely- it is implicitly suggesting. Most people reading an easy 160 character tweet often spend little time examining what the driver could see (a foggy day, driving too fast for conditions or slow but still not enough to see the pedestrian, and is not the best place to examine the culpability)
Everyone needs to adopt a Lagrange Point, where one does not gravitate towards a victimization or perpetrator assumption. The most neutral word is collision (I wouldn't even suggest crash, because that also implies an action- the collision is the most Newtonian-neutral :)
My disagreement with parts of the Open Street Blog is this:
"Violence that occurs in the traffic realm is, by definition, traffic violence. A car crash is always a car crash, even if the driver is ultimately found not guilty of criminal negligence. And when we feel a sense of unease saying these words, it is because we have been raised in a culture that has systematically and deliberately[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/03/05/streetsblog-101-how-journalists-help-build-car-culture/] worked to shift the blame for that violence onto victims, down to the subtlest workings of the language[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198219300727] in the news reports we read. "
One of the issues is that the right of way in suburbs is very limited, especially on stroads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad Thus the carless have very few places to walk without jaywalking in certain cases- less/not acceptable in places like a city- but also the city doesn't like bikes on the sidewalk, because it's considered dangerous to the most vulnerable pedestrians- I once got a loudspeaker warning in 2007 for riding on the sidewalk in Uptown, Chicago). That said, without dedicated bike lanes with a concrete divider, biking isn't going to be safer on the side of the road since cars frequently try to weave in and out to pass someone. Developing something like a new road (assuming new roads are still being built), suggests they need bike lanes designed from the ground up/start, rather than a retroactive path.
The terms get somehow equated, as if they are using the transitive property of equality a=b and b=c, therefore a = c, but in this case, it's like thinking "a~b~c" therefore a~c, but a is quite different from c. For example if a were a 0.49 and b were 0.99 and c were 1.49, one could say a & b are <1 therefore are similar, and b ~ c because it's +/-0.50 from b, therefore c ~ a, but for all we know, a could be the freezing point of a liquid and c could be the sublimation or vaporization point of b. Which is probably why they admit the person can be not guilty- apparently preferring the legal term as opposed to innocent. It's likely a lawyer wrote that page.
Transitive Property of Equality - Definition & Examples
https://www.expii.com/t/transitive-property-of-equality-definition-examples-4155
I got my first driver's license at 21. My mentality at the time- which was fine- was that I lived on campus, and I had no need for a car- therefore all my needs were met by bus and trains. That was nearly 20 years ago. Thus when I graduated, I still took trains and busses to work, but less so by the time I was 30, when I moved away from a suburb with trains.
https://micromobility.substack.com/ I subscribe to this blog- I took a sociology course at a community college in 2009, remembering an instructor who said that, in Europe, licenses may be taken away for accidents, but the u.s places a lot of emphasis on freedom, thus are less likely to take away someone's license in the event of a crash- perhaps encouraging people to have jobs. Maybe that's why unemployment is higher over there in some countries? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/
Of course, Europe has more rail and walkable cities, so that shouldn't be an issue except maybe for the countryside.