That all being said, I have had many a conversation with my wife regarding the sociology and psychology of motorists. Many of us tend to feel a personal disconnect from our fellow citizens while driving and courtesy shown outside the compartment of a car seems to be vastly different than that shown “in person.” Therefore, I feel that semantics and branding used to describe motorist accidents is reflective of the symptom of this phenomenon rather than it’s cause.

Here is the defintion of “accident” from the Meriam-Webster dictionary:

1 a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance b: lack of intention or necessity : chance
2 a: an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance b: an unexpected and medically important bodily event especially when injurious

I’ve checked all the major online dictionaries. Feel free to post a definition of accident that implies it refers to something that was not preventable. I haven’t found one.

As such, the whole idea of this and the other linked blog, that calling something an accident dismisses the possibility that the event was preventable, is simply wrong.

The use of the term accident is completely appropriate in describing most car crashes, even if they resulted in negligence on the part of the driver. The issue is intent.

If the driver (OR CYCLIST) struck and killed a pedestrian while behaving extremely recklessly, they can be charged with manslaughter, or driving (or biking) while under the influence. Criminal charges are handed out on a case-by-case basis depending on the investigation of each incident. But, last time I checked, in this country people are innocent until proven guilty. So until criminal charges are brought up, the term “accident” is appropriate. That said, I have no problem with saying “crash” instead of accident to refer to vehicle-related incidents, but my point is that it is wrong to assume that the fact that something is preventable means it is not an accident. This is a red herring semantics argument.

I will always support cyclist rights, and I often use my bike in my multi-modal commute (which includes bikes and buses and yes, sometimes cars). But if you’re going to heap all the blame on the behavior of the motorist, carefully separating the person from the vehicle, you should then be equally careful to separate the person from the vehicle in the case of cyclists. A motorist who hits a cyclist after the cyclist quickly darts out to the left, in front of the traveling car, because the cyclist is weaving close to the curb when there are no parked cars, and then sharply out into the lane when encountering a parked car, is not at fault for the cyclists reckless behavior simply because he is driving a car.