Don't say accident, say collision or crash

When you accidentally spill coffee on your trousers, that’s one thing, but if a driver's speeding car slams into a bus stop, killing a child in the process, it’s clearly different...so why does the language we use rarely distinguish between the two? While one can be dismissed as an accident, the other deserves to be described more carefully - nothing less than collision or crash will do.

After all, words are powerful. It's the reason we avoid the term 'road safety', preferring instead 'road danger reduction', which far more accurately defines the challenge at hand.

It's a sentiment expressed perfectly on the T-shirts printed by Rovelo Creative: "Road Safety:We ask everyone outside the car to be safe so that drivers can be dangerous". See below for you chance to win the T-shirt.

Accidents are unavoidable

When collisions occur on the railways, at sea or in the air, there are enquiries to determine their causes. Those responsible for piloting the planes, driving the trains or skippering the ships are suspended from duty pending the outcome and appropriate changes to systems, regulation or the law are implemented swiftly.

It's not altogether clear why the same thing doesn't happen following every road fatality in Britain, but until it does, let's at least be mindful of the way we describe road danger.

Media outlets routinely use the term ‘accident’, even though it implies the collision wasn’t preventable (and press guidelines explain clearly why they should not). The term ‘crash’ does not imply the driver is always to blame, it simply acknowledges that the matter deserves serious investigation and remedial measures to try and prevent it happening again. It's an approach that has allowed other European countries to introduce a Vision Zero - a serious attempt to prevent all deaths on the road.

Britain is a long way off implementing its own Vision Zero, but choosing our words carefully when we describe road danger would be a meaningful first step.

Road danger reduction

The term 'road safety' is divisive when the real goal is road danger reduction.

It's easy to confuse one for the other, so for an explanation of the difference, we will defer to the Road Danger Reduction Forum (RDRF) - a group we support.

Those who formed the RDRF were professionals working in local government as Road Safety Officers, highway and traffic engineers, officers working to promote sustainable transport, with support from councillors in a number of local authorities. The thrust behind setting out the Road Danger Reduction (RDR) agenda was – and continues to be – dissatisfaction with various elements of the official 'road safety' establishment, arguing that this is often very much part of the problem of danger on the road.

For example, the definition of a 'safe road' is based on the number of casualties and yet often there may be a decline in, for example, child pedestrian casualties not because the road environment for children has become safer, but simply because of a decline in children’s walking. Any apparent progress, as officially defined, may be precisely because of an increase in danger from motor traffic: one of the main reasons for parents prohibiting children from being independently mobile. Other ways in which conventional 'road safety' falls short are explained in detail at rdrf.org.uk

Win the Road Safety T-shirt

We have a unisex road safety T-shirt in medium to give away. Simply leave a comment at the bottom of the page and we'll pick a message at random next week.

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