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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 18:15:16 -0400
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On 2025-03-19 5:51 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2025 at 2:49:13 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2025-03-19 3:28 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>>>   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.
>>>   
>> What about the situation where you drop your gun through circumstances
>> beyond your control - like stepping on a banana peel - the gun hits the
>> ground and discharges?
> 
> It can't. We didn't use Alec Baldwin guns. It's physically impossible for the
> SIG-Sauer P-229 to fire unless the trigger is pulled.

In that case, it seem reasonable to make every unintentional discharge a 
negligent one.
> 
>>   I understand that most (modern) guns are designed
>> to be "drop safe" but that not all of them actually are. At least that's
>> what I was told when I asked my friend who was a career soldier in the
>> Canadian Forces about that once. Of course that situation might be
>> nearly as improbable as the meteor strike you proposed earlier....
>>
>>
>>>>   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
> 
> 


-- 
Rhino