Posted by When did you last hear of a plane accident? Planes don’t have accidents, they have crashes. So why do cars have accidents?
The terminology used for cars versus aeroplanes involved in terminal incidents is interestingly different, and in my opinion, road users should adopt the terminology of the aviation industry.
The reasoning is this: If we use language that absolves us of our responsibility in an event, we take less care than if we know that we will be held responsible.
The cause of an aircraft crash is always assumed to be pilot error until proven to be otherwise and for good reason. Aircraft are generally very well built and maintained. They generally don’t do anything without the pilot making some sort of input. But this is surely the case with cars too, isn’t it?
Well, yes, it is. Most cars don’t have faults that could cause them to do things without some driver input. There are of course some cars that are unroadworthy but that’s why we should all check our cars regularly, and have them MOT’d annually. Read this.
Have you noticed that the police don’t use the words “a car has had an accident”? That’s because a car hasn’t had an accident, it has, in fact, been crashed. Someone has made an error, and as a result of this, the vehicle has been crashed.
Our vehicles don’t have minds of their own, they do as instructed, and occasionally if we don’t instruct them properly, things happen that we don’t expect. So a skid, for instance, is not caused by the car, it is caused by the failure of the driver to recognise the conditions that lead to the skid and properly control the vehicle. This might mean that they brake too late or too hard. They might make sudden steering inputs, or fail to make the correct ones.
We are responsible for our actions, and for properly controlling our vehicles, and failure to do so correctly can get us and other road users into a lot of problems. So, if you crash your vehicle, or are crashed into, what should you do?
I’ve written another article to answer these questions and you can find it here.