51–60 of 213 posts
I don't think that "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet" or "impairment was not an issue" are examples of counterfactuals; the authors should crack open a dictionary look up what that word means in general use, and additionally how it is used in philosophy and science. If you have word from the police that the driver was not found to have any alcohol or if the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet, those are simply facts…
I'm afraid I find this somewhere between creepy and ridiculous. On the ridiculous side: the idea that calling a car accident an "accident" is somehow wrong - as if, because I understand that what happened was an accident, I am somehow incapable of thinking "hey, maybe we need better road safety legislation". On the creepy side: the general approach which is, instead of making public arguments about why cars are bad,…
I don't think that "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet" or "impairment was not an issue" are examples of counterfactuals; the authors should crack open a dictionary look up what that word means in general use, and additionally how it is used in philosophy and science. If you have word from the police that the driver was not found to have any alcohol or if the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet, those are simply facts…
There seems to be some conflict with how to define "counterfactual". Merriam-Webster defines it as "contrary to fact" [1], so that comes down to a statement being either true or false. But the way I'm using it (and the research my work is based off) aligns more with the Cambridge dictionary usage: "thinking about what did not happen but could have happened, or relating to this kind of thinking" [2]. Further, Stanford Philosophy states, "Modal discourse concerns alternative ways things can be, e.g., what might be true, what isn’t true but could have been, what should be done. This entry focuses on counterfactual modality which concerns what is not, but could or would have been." [3]
> If you have word from the police that the driver was not found to have any alcohol or if the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet, those are simply facts, not counterfactuals.
I do believe these are counterfactuals, consistent with definitions from [2] and [3]. For example, if a bicyclist is hit and killed and the news article states the fact he wasn't wearing a helmet, sometimes it feels like the article is insinuating that if the bicyclist had been wearing a helmet, he would have survived. Of course, we cannot know that without investigating how fast the driver was going, how heavy the colliding vehicle was, etc. Some of those crashes are simply unsurvivable. The article espouses a "what could have been" thought. Please feel free to disagree, but provide links so I can read more.
> You can't logically call a pedestrian hit an accident until other hypotheses have been ruled out
I agree, but it seems that journalists take a different view. They see "crash" as intentional (i.e. you used your vehicle to murder someone), and that's why they use the word "accident". The way I see it, accident implies the incident was unforeseeable and unpreventable. I also think "accident" requires a higher burden of proof: just like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, I think all accidents are crashes, but not all crashes are accidents. In the absence of a conclusive police investigation demonstrating complete unavoidability, the word accident should not be used.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/counterfactual [2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/counterf... [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/counterfactuals/
This is neat, but something bugs me about the framing of the intended goal versus how you propose to get there. If the intent is to raise public awareness and to put pressure on leadership to make roads generally safer, why do almost all the corrections follow a pattern of shifting blame from the individual pedestrian onto the individual driver? Many of the suggested fixes are just their own form of counterfactual -…
One way to make roads safer is to make better drivers. There is a lot of training and continuing education that can be done to make better drivers. It is far too easy to drive, and once you get your license it is very hard to lose it even as your body degrades to the point you cannot see. People think of bad driving tickets (mostly speeding) as just a price you pay to drive. I've never heard of someone getting a tail…
Here’s why the reframing matters: Accidents are “oops” that are to accepted as fact of life. The no reason to change the system. Accidents happen. Crashes are not accidents. They have a cause and the cause can addressed. Crashes can be prevented. So the reframing shifts from talking about a system we should accept how it is to one that can be improved.
It would be inaccurate, unethical, and potentially libelous for any newspaper to construe the events of a potential criminal act (or any event, really) without doing any investigation to support that conclusion, and primarily in order to further an editorial agenda.
Currently there are headlines like this:
"Car hits cyclist"
Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike".
A more accurate headline would be "Car driver hits cyclist".
The other way to improve reporting is to call a preventable crash what it is, a crash and not an "accident".
More here: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20049939/five-cyclist-blamin...
I'm afraid I find this somewhere between creepy and ridiculous. On the ridiculous side: the idea that calling a car accident an "accident" is somehow wrong - as if, because I understand that what happened was an accident, I am somehow incapable of thinking "hey, maybe we need better road safety legislation". On the creepy side: the general approach which is, instead of making public arguments about why cars are bad,…
The issue is that the term accident implies a lack of intension, while in most crash reporting we actually have no idea if the collision was intentional, negligent, or whatever. Using a term like crash or collision is actually much closer to the bare facts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t be obtuse. A person collapses into the street and is struck by oncoming traffic - no one is to blame. It is an accident.
If someone collapses into the street, the driver should be able to stop in time, unless they are going to fast. Who I can think to blame here: * The auto manufacturer for not having sensors to detect this. * The city for making car dependent areas * The city for making roads that have cars drive so fast by pedestrians, that the pedestrian can die if hit * The driver for not driving more reasonably * The city for not…
Even 5 mph is too fast if the collapse is shielded from view until the last instant.
In other words your statement boils down to "driver can stop unless they can't".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I do not think you bear responsibility if you collapse and someone strikes you with their car and then flees the scene.
Don’t be obtuse. A person collapses into the street and is struck by oncoming traffic - no one is to blame. It is an accident.
This is neat, but something bugs me about the framing of the intended goal versus how you propose to get there. If the intent is to raise public awareness and to put pressure on leadership to make roads generally safer, why do almost all the corrections follow a pattern of shifting blame from the individual pedestrian onto the individual driver? Many of the suggested fixes are just their own form of counterfactual -…
One way to make roads safer is to make better drivers. There is a lot of training and continuing education that can be done to make better drivers. It is far too easy to drive, and once you get your license it is very hard to lose it even as your body degrades to the point you cannot see. People think of bad driving tickets (mostly speeding) as just a price you pay to drive. I've never heard of someone getting a tail…
Furthermore, we literally use the phrase, "never got so much as a speeding ticket" to suggest that speeding is the epitome of a minor, inconsequential infraction, when the reality is that we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes.
I'm afraid I find this somewhere between creepy and ridiculous. On the ridiculous side: the idea that calling a car accident an "accident" is somehow wrong - as if, because I understand that what happened was an accident, I am somehow incapable of thinking "hey, maybe we need better road safety legislation". On the creepy side: the general approach which is, instead of making public arguments about why cars are bad,…
The problem with using "accident" as the default term is that it preempts any evidence-finding, implying that it was nobody's fault. If someone shoots their gun randomly and someone gets hurt by just being there, nobody will call it an "accident", but somehow if the weapon is a car, the driver gets the benefit of the doubt regardless of the facts.