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A car accident in which three pedestrians were hit has closed down North Capitol Street between Massachusetts Avenue and H Street NE.
Police are encouraging drivers to use alternate routes as they expect the street to remain closed for several hours. Few details are available at this time, and WJLA is reporting that one victim was trapped underneath a vehicle.
Edit 12:45 pm— WTOP reports that seven people were injured in the crash, which happened shortly before 8 am. An SUV was reportedly trying to beat the light. One of our writers tried to make her way back home around the scene and tells us that the police barricade starts at Massachusetts, New Jersey and G Streets NW. There are detours in place at E Street NE and NW as of this post update.
How do we know it was an accident? As of now, it’s a ‘crash’. If it turns out the driver was speeding, etc then it is no accident at all but an entirely predictable outcome. An ‘accident’ is spilling your coffee. The term just serves to absolve drivers of guilt in a crash by framing them as freak, unavoidable occurrences.
“Accident” refers to the fact that none of this was intentional. Irresponsible? Absolutely. But I don’t think anyone woke up this morning planning such a sad and preventable accident.
What I’m saying is, if you are doing something illegal like speeding, what happens as a result is not an accident anymore. It’s not the right term to use anymore.
One of the police officers on the scene believed that there was an elderly person driving the vehicle. I think not enough is known to assume much.
We should use words that neither convey or absolve blame, particularly during early reporting. Many police departments are moving away from using the term “accident” in favor neutral terms like “crash” or “collision.” An accident is defined as “An unexpected or undesired event, chance or fortune” while a crash is “to cause a vehicle or aircraft to have a collision, to be involved in a crash.”
Crashes don’t just happen. They’re not random chance; most have causes and can be prevented. We don’t yet know who or what contributed to this crash, but we shouldn’t immediately rush to absolve this as a random chance accident.
Accident is less factual than crash, because it makes an assumption about the intent or lack thereof of the parties involved. Collision is a better term, it’s factual. It reports the events and leaves inferences out of the picture. The job of finding and deciding fault and intent belongs to the investigators and courts. Reporting should be objective, but we’ve been bombarded by media outlets that have become commentators rather than reporters.
Now, since this is a comments section, I will leave my opinion, which agrees with Maria Helena, I hope the driver(s) didn’t wake up that morning in a murderous mood and decided to mow down the pedestrians along with the traffic light.
what if the driver of the suv just had a medical problem and this was a true accident?