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From: BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Auto accident versus collision; I was wrong
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 19:28:33 -0000 (UTC)
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On Mar 19, 2025 at 8:45:20 AM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

> The law is entirely semantics. Perhaps ordinary people (who don't watch
> fictional lawyers on tv and become legal experts like me) don't
> appreciate this, but a state legislature that employs professionals who
> are specifically experts in legal language and statutory construction
> fail to grasp the consequence of a semantic change?
> 
> In this video, Steve Lehto discusses the unintended consequence of
> substituting "collision" for "accident" when Hawaii amended a law. Years
> ago, I was one of those people who stopped using the word "accident",
> influenced by others who wanted newspaper reporters and others in the
> media to stop reporting such incidents as "accidents" because the reader
> or listener would assume that the incident was unavoidable.
> 
> But that's not what "accident" means. Neither in dictionary definitions
> nor statutory language has it meant "unavoidable" in which there is no
> fault to find. Instead, it means that the party at fault for the
> incident had not committed an intentional act.
> 
> "Accident", therefore, means "without intent" not "without fault".
> 
> To the uninformed reader or listener, as "crash" or "collision" is just
> a factual statement without finding of fault and without proving intent,
> "unavoidable" isn't incorrectly assumed.

The year I joined the USSS, they announced a policy change with regard to
firearms. All mentions of 'accidental discharge' of a firearm were replaced
with 'negligent discharge'. Because there's no way a gun can just go off
accidentally. It's physically impossible. The only way a gun goes off
unintended is through negligence. It puts the responsibility for the discharge
squarely on the person holding the gun.

> Lehto went off on a bit of an incorrect tangent about why people were
> pushing for the word "accident" not to be used.
> 
> There are unintended consequences of changing statutory language because
> "feelings". Here's an example:
> 
> In Honolulu, Five-Oh was chasing another motorist without lights and
> sirens. The driver of the vehicle being chased flipped the vehicle.
> People inside the vehicle were seriously injured.
> 
> The cop driving was charged with a felony based on colliding with the
> vehicle being chased, because language in the statute had been changed
> from "accident" to "collision". Now, the state may have been able to
> prove that the cop was at fault for causing an accident because of the
> unsafe manner of pursuit and that conduct during pursuit was criminally
> negligent or reckless. But was the cop at fault for causing a collision?
> 
> If in fact the vehicles had not collided, then the change in statutory
> language prevents charges in which an accident occurred that was not the
> result of a collision.
> 
> Oops.
> 
> Here's the video:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATTJtvXbeU