Halibut Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 If I fire a gun along a crowded street and the bullet hits someone and kills them, is it an "accident"? If I enter a pub and start a chainsaw up and wave it around my head, decapitating someone, is it an "accident"? Calling what happened an "accident" is insulting, ignorant and a kick in the teeth the the grieving relatives. It was NOT AN ACCIDENT! Accidents are unpredictable events. Driving a car after not sleeping makes a crash far more likely, just like driving whilst drunk or on drugs. People who defend drunk, drugged or exhausted drivers by claiming the almost inevitable carnage they cause is just "an accident" make me sick. In police-speak, car crashes are not accidents. To describe them as such is considered inaccurate by traffic police. Collisions are predictable and preventable. Trying to claim they are just accidents is grossly inaccurate and tends to absolve people for their errors. In fact, the word ‘accident’ is to be banned from the new edition of Britain’s Highway Code, which is published by the UK Department of Transport. Instead the words ‘collision’, ‘crash’ or ‘incident’ will be used to describe events that once were known as accidents. In June 2001, the prestigious British Medical Journal signed up to the crusade, explaining in an editorial why it had decided to ban the word accident from its pages. ‘ince most injuries and precipitating events are predictable and preventable’, the word accident should not be used to refer to ‘injuries or the events that produce them’. It could have been predicted that the man was at risk of falling asleep and therefore coming off the road or causing a collision - what was certainly not predictable was that the consequences would be so far reaching. I still maintain that the driver - irresponsible though he undoubtedly was for driving in that state - was also profoundly unlucky that he set such a tragic sequence of events off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindrift Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 It could have been predicted that the man was at risk of falling asleep and therefore coming off the road or causing a collision - what was certainly not predictable was that the consequences would be so far reaching. I still maintain that the driver - irresponsible though he undoubtedly was for driving in that state - was also profoundly unlucky that he set such a tragic sequence of events off. The driver wasn't unlucky, he was profoundly lucky, the people he killed were unlucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Accidents are unpredictable events. Precisely. The appearance of a passenger train coming one way and then a freight train coming the other, both before the 999 operatives had time to put a red flag on the line, was entirely unpredictable; the odds against it were enormous. And at that, the fact that his vehicle would end up falling on a train line instead of simply veering into a tree, central reservation, or other obstacle was in itself completely unpredictable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halibut Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 The driver wasn't unlucky, he was profoundly lucky, the people he killed were unlucky. Feeling responsible for a whole load of deaths and being a public hate figure when you've done something that many many other people do with no ill consequence is still unlucky in my book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindrift Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 The term road ‘accident’ when used to describe the serious and sometimes fatal result of people driving recklessly or irresponsibly, fosters the notion that violence is somehow unavoidable or excusable when performed with a motor vehicle. It's a mealy-mouthed apology for an entirely predictable outcome that devastates families and wrecks lives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 The driver wasn't unlucky, he was profoundly lucky He was sentenced to ten years, reduced to five on appeal. The man who committed exactly the same act not two weeks later wasn't even charged. In what way was Gary Hart the luckier of the two? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 The term road ‘accident’ when used to describe the serious and sometimes fatal result of people driving recklessly or irresponsibly, fosters the notion that violence is somehow unavoidable or excusable when performed with a motor vehicle. It's a mealy-mouthed apology for an entirely predictable outcome that devastates families and wrecks lives. See above. The outcome was not "entirely predictable;" it was colossally unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rad Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Mod note: Please refrain from insulting other users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anywebsite Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 He was sentenced to 5 years for what he did. That's just 6 months for each of the people whose deaths he caused. I don't believe he served the full five years, did he? edit to say, just seen that he served just 30 months for it. 2½ years. half the sentence given. 3 months per person killed. It was an accident. It might have been an extremely careless accident which was entirely his fault, but he still didn't plan to kill 10 people that day. So he's not a murderer & shouldn't be treated as one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spindrift Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Feeling responsible for a whole load of deaths and being a public hate figure when you've done something that many many other people do with no ill consequence is still unlucky in my book. It is quite clear from his disingenuous and tasteless remarks that Hart does not feel responsible. He actually said he is not responsible, have you read the story? But in his first in-depth interview since the crash, the 47-year-old denied he should have been held responsible for the deaths of six passengers and four rail workers. 'As far as being asleep at the wheel, that's what I went to prison for. It's not what the truth is. No deaths occurred at the point of impact with my Land Rover,' said Hart. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361354/Selby-crash-10th-anniversary-Driver-Gary-Hart-feels-accountable.html#ixzz1FIXzY2nU The fact he only served two and a half years in prison and now has his driving license back is frankly baffling. After he killed those people, Hart lied to the police and claimed there was a mechanical failure in his vehicle. Hart also tried to sue the Dept Transport for a contribution to the damages Hart had to pay. The case was thrown out. Hart is a terrible, indecent man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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