Archive for the ‘The Accidental Journalist’ Category

Yup.  No way to see this one coming.

I couldn’t help but notice, reading about the tragic case of Aileen McKay-Dalton, which the NYPD has made — per usual — an absolute hash of, this early dispatch in the New York Daily News. The most charitable thing we might say about it was that it was a rush job.

Even though the article later notes that police were still investigating which of the two drivers ran the red light — and it now appears it was the SUV driver, who witnesses also say was speeding — the piece still frames the bulk of the article as to cast the burden of suspicion on McKay-Dalton. Calling it a “Vespa accident,” as if she somehow skidded out of control, the article then notes “McKay-Dalton was riding west on DeKalb Ave. when she collided with a 2005 Ford Explorer driving north on Clinton Ave., police said.” So even though the same article notes that police at that point didn’t know which driver had run the light, the construction of the sentence subtly attributes culpability to McKay-Dalton: “she collided with,” rather than, “she was struck by.”

The mayor of L.A. is cut off by a taxi; it’s “his accident.”

I particularly enjoyed the rather abstract language near the bottom.

The LAPD issued a directive instructing officers that a motorist can be held responsible for causing a bicycle accident even if he or she did not make direct contact with the rider — and can be arrested for fleeing the scene, Box said.

In other words, striking a bike with your car is “causing a bicycle accident.”

(thanks Peter)

The first thing that jumps out in this piece is the identification of the victim as “homeless.” A subtle detail, or some kind of implied pejorative — hmm, maybe he was one of those crazy guys you see wandering willy-nilly across the street, and perhaps he was asking for it. Can you imagine the headline: McMansion Owner Struck and Killed by Car in Santa Barbara?

The victim had already been struck by a car before — the driver was cited with failure to yield — but the circumstances here beggar belief:

Castillo, according to McCaffrey, told investigators that he thought the man would clear the intersection before he drove through, but wound up striking the victim with the right front of his car. The victim was reportedly swept up onto the hood of the vehicle before falling to the pavement.

Yes, it’s always a good idea, when approaching an elderly pedestrian, to continue at speed in a multi-ton vehicle towards someone crossing in a crosswalk, owing to your own faith in your driving abilities and your estimation of their walking speed. There’s certainly nothing that can go wrong there, unless, oops, you have an “accident.”

Reader Joshua points to this story, via The Strib. All the usual suspects: Alcohol, no belts, previous crashes.

Alcohol-impaired driving, despite a century’s worth of evidence of its dangers, still being couched in terms of an “accident.”

(thanks Rich)

C’mon, you guys make this way too easy.

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) – A man was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on a DWI charge and numerous traffic violations after he slammed into a Baton Rouge police car early Friday morning.

The officer was patrolling in the 2500 block of Evangeline when the crash occurred. The street was temporarily closed to traffic while police investigated the accident.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Police say Hunt told them shortly after the May 2 accident that she was applying red polish to her nails as she drove at about 50 mph toward an intersection and did not see motorcyclist Anita Zaffke until after she hit her.

Zaffke, 56, who lived in Lake Zurich, was stopped at a traffic signal when she was struck.

The driver, by the way, was charged with reckless homicide.

(thanks Alex)

Via the Ithaca Journal:

ITHACA — The Tompkins County grand jury has indicted an Ithaca man in connection with an accident involving a motorcyclist.

The grand jury charged Larry Ross, 52, with second-degree vehicular assault, a Class E felony, along with criminal mischief, reckless driving, driving while intoxicated and driving with more than .08 percent blood alcohol content.

(thanks Brian)

From Time:

One state where a lot of public attention is being paid to texting while driving is New York. After several fatal accidents there involving text messaging, State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz says constituents began calling his office to demand action. He is now sponsoring a text message ban in the state assembly; the state senate has already passed a similar bill.

There are many words for what happens when people texting while driving crash, but “accident” is not one of them.

As this blog has noted before, the news media seems to go out of its way to avoid ascribing personal responsibility in any sort of traffic crash (I am now calling this segment ‘The Accidental Journalist’). I just came across this weird doozy of a sentence in this article, about a “problem” intersection in Georgia:

On Deans Bridge Road at Gordon Highway, rear-end accidents are occurring in the right-turn lanes.

Drivers are stopping at the yield sign and causing accidents for those not paying attention behind them. Mr. Cassell said officials are looking at correcting the problem with new lane striping.

Let me get this straight. Drivers are stopping at the yield sign, which they are required to do when there is approaching traffic, and thus “causing accidents” to the poor sods (or “causing accidents for,” in this article’s odd wording) behind them who are not, uh, paying attention. I propose this wording: Inattentive drivers are crashing into the unsuspecting behinds of law-abiding folk.

I’m also not sure how you fix rear-end crashes with lane striping, FWIW.