It’s No Accident

10:59 AM EDT on March 24, 2009

What if news articles of shootings, stabbings and other deaths used the same language normally employed to describe traffic collisions? Today on the Streetsblog Network, David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington points to media coverage of a crash in Culpeper County, VA, as an example of our tendency to view traffic violence as an immutable force of nature.

Photo: Fetchy/Flickr

No news story ever began saying, "A person was killed yesterday when he collided with a bullet moving at high speed in the opposite direction." Yet that's exactly how news stories about traffic "accidents" often begin.
Our habit of dehumanizing the actions of cars tends to create assumptions that their actions are not actually someone's responsibility. A driver hit and killed some people in another car in Culpeper. It's extremely unlikely his car magically malfunctioned. And even if it did, we don't engage in the same linguistic contortions to say, for example, that a police officer's bullet impacted a suspected robber, who had himself been holding a gun which fired into someone else earlier in the day. That would be silly. So is this.

Elsewhere on the Network, with the MTA set to vote on drastic fare hikes and service reductions tomorrow, Second Avenue Sagas looks back at how the agency, and the region, finds itself on the brink of transit doomsday. Still, The Transport Politic notes that some in Staten Island see light rail in that borough's future. And as Urban Milwaukee prepares for new streetcar service, Beyond DC welcomes rail to BRT pioneer Curitiba, Brazil.

Brad Aaron

Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York's dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.

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