Comments on: Passive Resistance

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:22:36 +0000

Ah, that is because the
driving licence has become a sacred right which absolves the driver of all responsibility…

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:17:21 +0000

This writer is also in agreement. Well said, Tom.

By: chris hutt

chris hutt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:09:05 +0000

One of the most obvious manifestations of this must be the tendency of people to say “the roads are dangerous” if, for example, asked why they don’t cycle. It’s obviously not the roads that are dangerous but some road users. But to say “motorists drive dangerously” would for most people be an admission of their own involvement in creating the problem. So they blame some inanimate object.

By: Karl-On-Sea (Twitter: @karlonsea)

Karl-On-Sea (Twitter: @karlonsea) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:30:59 +0000

This is so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to avoid in our conversation or writing. I wrote a short post yesterday about parking & driver choices, and most of it took several re-writes to get it from the passive to the active voice. Even now, re-reading it, I can see that I’ve failed twice in the photo captions!

The other linguistic oddity that I think you point out in the book is that we don’t make the same mistake with bikes. It’s always “the cyclist who . . .” rather than “the bike then . . .”

By: Aisha O'Brien

Aisha O'Brien — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:02:24 +0000

As a journalist, I feel the same way about car crash reporting. For a creative writing class (MFA level, so it’s very serious business), I wrote a story triggered by the Las Vegas Sun’s Twitter feed. Almost every other tweet is about a car crash. So I imagined what actually happened beyond just the details of how many intersections they ran through, when it happened, and how many were injured. That way I could humanize the person behind the wheel as I’m pretty much not allowed to do in work.

I also discovered I like writing about largely unlikable people.

By: Jay Jardine

Jay Jardine — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:04:11 +0000

The “killer highway” label irritates me as well. Google search here.

It’s like granting volition to a mix of asphalt, gravel and painted lines.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:53:03 +0000

Quote: “Finally, our habit of dehumanizing the actions of cars…”

Well, cars aren’t human so that’s fair enough. It seems like David Alpert is making the same mistake he complains of, substituting the car for the driver.

By: Tom Vanderbilt

Tom Vanderbilt — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:32:08 +0000

It gets into interesting semantic territory for sure; if one shot a gun and killed someone in a hunting accident, would the journalist say the victim ‘was killed by the gun.’? I suppose this would be wrapped up in the victim ‘was killed by an errant shot” or “in an accident” or some such. And is ‘killed’ per se the same as murder, which implies intentional killing? Legally, does the word ‘kill’ imply causality, I wonder?

It reminds me of the “Family Guy” episode in which a character said the words “Laura Bush killed a guy”; which, in the strictest sense, she did. But the show of course caused a certain amount of outrage.

By: John

John — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:46:33 +0000

I have ranted about this for a long time. Someone in the local media here in Austin told me they intentionally use passive voice and “blame” the tools, not the humans, because at press time no one has been found guilty of anything. If they had reported “So-and-so killed four people while driving the wrong way…” they’re opening themselves up to a lawsuit. They could use the weasel-word “allegedly”, but to be extra safe they just saw the vehicle was on the wrong side of the road as if the Highway Fairy just dropped it there out of the blue.