Cycling in Waterloo Region

[Pheidippides]

What is the difference between “accident” and “crash”?

The main difference in the terms is that accidents, by definition, are preventable. All accidents can be crashes, but not all crashes are accidents.

It may not seem that this small change in semantics is important, but it is because it removes the implicit “nobody’s-fault” attitude that the word accident conveys that neutral words like crash, incident, or collision do not.

When you use the word accident, it’s like, ‘God made it happen,’ or like a lightning strike, something beyond anyone’s control, an unforeseen event that could not have been anticipated, and for which no one can be blamed.

That’s not the case though. All traffic crashes are preventable/fixable problems caused by dangerous and poorly designed streets, and people making unsafe choices and bad habits/behaviours. They are not accidents.

Until all the facts are known the presumption should be to call it a crash/incident/collision especially when you consider that a very large majority of fatal crashes are caused by bad choices like intoxication, speeding, distraction, or carelessness and, therefore, are not accidents. For example, at the time of a fatal crash you often only have one side of the story, the survivor’s; the victim(s) are dead. So by using the term accident you are exonerating those responsible before all the facts are known. Then of course the front page news becomes old news and no one reads the correction notice buried in fine print in the back pages a week later, and so society is left with an on-going generalization based on their impression from the original headlines that are misrepresentations of the final facts.

Even if your brakes fail resulting in you crashing it should not be considered an accident if you have deliberately chosen to skip the maintenance on your brakes. The crash in that example could have been prevented with regular maintenance to the brakes.
 
Planes don’t have accidents; they crash. Cranes don’t have accidents; they collapse. Why then why do we keep calling traffic crashes accidents?

Even the AP has switched their guidance on this, “reporters should avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible.”