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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 20:23:58 -0400
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On 2025-03-19 6:43 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2025 at 3:13:27 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2025-03-19 5:50 PM, BTR1701 wrote:
>>>   On Mar 19, 2025 at 2:44:36 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
>>>   wrote:
>>>   
>>>>   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.
>>>   
>>>   All it did was teach me the lesson: if it happens again, say you were out
>>>   stretching your legs and not in the car, regardless of whether it was true
>>> or
>>>   not.
>>>   
>>>   
>> That might work once but I suspect if that started being a regular thing
>> among agents, the bureaucrats would insist that you couldn't leave the
>> car without prior permission from a supervisor or dispatcher (if you
>> have dispatchers). I'm not even joking.
>>
>> Last year, I had to have a gastroscopy at a local hospital. I was having
>> a bit of trouble with things "going down the wrong way" so they stuck a
>> tube down my throat to look around, then to make a bit more room for
>> food, pills, whatever to go down smoothly. They sedated me first. The
>> whole thing apparently only took about 5 minutes and I felt absolutely
>> fine when I woke up but the rules of this procedure are that I am
>> absolutely forbidden to drive myself home, take the bus home, or even
>> take a cab. The ONLY way they would do the procedure was for me to have
>> a friend pick me up afterwards and drive me home. Luckily, I have
>> friends that are retired who could drive me and someone was available
>> for when my procedure was scheduled but my friend lives out of town,
>> maybe half an hour from the hospital. It really irked me that this was
>> the only way to get the procedure. I was absolutely fully capable of
>> walking to the bus stop and getting home from there. I asked the doctor
>> and he said it was "hospital policy"; I have no doubt that policy was
>> developed when their lawyers said it reduced liability.
>>
>> It would make sense to have a policy like that if I was woozy after the
>> procedure but I was 100% fine. But if I hadn't agreed to that, they
>> would have cancelled the procedure. Bloody bureaucrats!!!
> 
> So you tell them your friend is picking you up, they do the procedure, then
> you walk out the doors and go to the bus stop. They can't retroactively cancel
> the procedure.
> 
> 
It's not that easy: they insist on having the friend's name and number 
on the form that you fill in and THEY call the friend, not me, when it's 
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