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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Auto accident versus collision; I was wrong
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:44:36 -0400
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On 2025-03-19 3:42 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2025 at 10:03:23 AM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2025-03-19 11:45 AM, Adam H. Kerman 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.
>>>   
>>>   Lehto went off on a bit of an incorrect tangent about why people were
>>>   pushing for the word "accident" not to be used.
>>
>> When I was driving school buses, I found that my employers never used
>> the word "accident". If someone hit something while driving their bus,
>> even if it was the merest scratch, it was never an accident: it was
>> *always* a collision. (I'm sure this would have been true if a person
>> were hit, although I don't recall anyone ever hitting a person while I
>> worked there.) I feel sure this was their way of making us take
>> responsibility for what had happened. We didn't get to say anything that
>> implied that whatever happened couldn't be helped in some way. Even if
>> we weren't at fault, I think they expected that we could have done
>> something to prevent or minimize the event. Drivers were always taken
>> off the road for a day or two and made to have a retraining session with
>> another driver after a collision.
> 
> Even if a meteor fell out of the sky and hit the bus? You still have to go
> through retraining?
> 
> I absolutely hate bureaucratic nonsense like that.
> 
My employers were reasonably sensible people for the most part so I like 
to think that they wouldn't force a retraining session on a driver if 
something like a meteor strike happened.

Then again, my brother - who worked for the same company but drove a 
minivan instead of a bus - had a flat once. It took many hours for the 
repair service to come and change out the tire and then he was told he 
needed a retraining session. I asked why, given the circumstances, and 
he said he didn't really understand it either. But I don't think he ever 
actually *did* the retraining session. It was one of the very last days 
of the school year so it may simply have been lost in the shuffle. Or 
maybe they realized how silly it was to do a retraining session for that 
circumstance.

And that reminds me that I had a flat tire myself once. I ran over a 
piece of something on the road just before I got to the school and 
didn't notice anything off but after I'd let the kids off and was doing 
my child-check (to make sure no one was still on the bus), a teacher 
crossed the laneway in from of my parked bus and noticed a hissing from 
the left front tire. He brought that to my attention and I realized that 
I'd driven over something. Having remembered how long it took someone to 
come for my brother's flat and being in dire need of a washroom, I 
decided to drive the bus back to our office - the repair bays are in the 
same building - because drivers were not permitted to use the school 
washrooms. I took slower secondary roads rather than the expressway - 
and got back without incident. However, I was surprised to discover that 
the damaged tire was not even properly seated on the rim. The bus hadn't 
ridden oddly with the front left side sagging as I would have thought 
given the circumstances. I told the mechanics that I probably shouldn't 
have moved once I knew about the flat and they agreed but I didn't get 
into any trouble let alone forced to take a retraining session.

> When I was a super-secret government agent, the absolute worst thing that
> could happen was for you to have a car collision. You could walk down the
> street and shoot someone at random and have less paperwork and bureaucratic
> hoops to jump through than there was with a minor fender-bender.
> 
> In the aftermath of 9-11, I was assigned as the detail leader for Lauren Bush
> (George W's niece) who was a high school student at the time. It was a very
> loose detail and we didn't go into the school with her. We sat out in the
> parking lot in a car, parked near hers and would pick her up when she left
> school each afternoon. She had a panic button that she could push if anything
> happened inside the school that would bring us running in.
> 
> So over the course of several months, as I was sitting in my parked car, I was
> backed into by high school kids not one, not two, but three different times.
> Each bump came with reams of paperwork and repair estimates (even when no
> repairs were necessary) and as a bonus on my third incident, I was told I had
> take a mandatory driver's education safety course.
> 
> Even though my car was parked in each instance and the engine wasn't even
> running. They told me if I'd been standing nearby and the car was empty, it
> wouldn't have counted, but because I was inside the car each time when it
> happened, then according to the bureaucratic rules, I was presumed to need
> re-education.
> 
> Whoever thought forcing people who carry loaded firearms to deal with such
> inscrutable and intractable bureaucracy wasn't thinking very clearly.
> 
> 
LOL!

I'm gonna guess that the paperwork was to cover their asses in case you, 
or anyone else in the car, developed an injury after the fact - "I 
thought it was just a bit of whiplash but the doctor says I've got a 
serious injury" - and limit the government's liability.

I hear you though: the bureaucracy seems to be able to conjure up 
mountains of paperwork for circumstances that don't seem to require it.

As for agents not pulling a Peter Finch (from the film Network) and 
screaming "I'm damned mad and I can't take it any more!) them emptying a 
mag into the paper-pushers, I'm guessing that either USSS agents have to 
have extraordinary levels of patience to get the job OR the geniuses in 
the bureaucracy simply didn't give it any thought. My money's on the 
latter....

-- 
Rhino