Road Traffic Injury vs Accident

One of the painful shocks after the collision was when paramedics and Emergency Department (ED) staff kept calling it accident. The first time they used it was when paramedic come to me and asked:

- Are you the person who was involved in an accident.

- No. - I replied. - I was hit by a car.

I was disoriented and did not realized that they may call it an accident. However, I thought it is unlikely that someone else got accidentally injured near by, so they must be here for me. "They just have been misinformed" - I thought.

I found that in Australia in some cases term accident is used to describe traffic collision. That was quite shocking and offensive. For some time I was not willing to spend time on this subject. It is just too offensive and absurd to use that term. However, I heard it too many times, and it seems some people using it without realizing that they are affected and spreading propaganda. While it is so offensive, that I do not want to spend time and energy helping for someone to overcome their stupidity, but we all make mistakes. And I made way too many since I got injured. I wish someone pointed out when trauma was affecting my thought process. I do not know their story, therefore I will help others the way I was hoping to find help my self.

At the I prepared short explanation for people who still use offensive and misleading term accident.

Attitude at ED

There is well know impact of the words we use to describe something. The clear link between usage of term and attitude towards people was clearly demonstrated when I came to ED.

- Bicycle accident - paramedic introduced me to ED nurse handing my papers.

- Another one - replied nurse and nodded her head towards young man sitting in wheel chair.

- You would think none should be left by now. - continue paramedic, - Stay at home if you can not afford a car.

- Foreigners. - replied nurse. - They came to our country, but can not buy a car...

There were many things wrong in that conversation including the thought that paramedic might have not been born in Austrlia, but I had no energy to argue. I looked at the man in wheelchair. He was in his mid twenties. I would think Indian ancestry.

- What has happened" - I asked.

- A car cut in front of me. I felt of my motorbike and it fell on my leg." - replied man and nodded towards his swollen ankle. He had some Indian accent.

Lucky you, I thought. It will heal reasonably well in a few months. They could not even get the facts right, bicycle and motorbike and two different things. The fear rushed through my body. I wonder how long it will take for my body to heal.

- It must be painful. - I said.

- It is. - he replied. He smiled through the pain and a tear run down. - But not as bad as - he pointed to my swollen shin.

I smiled. The tears run down on both cheeks. "Do not smile", I thought to my self, "you can not control tears if you smile".

- Lucky you had a helmet - the nurse interrupted us, addressing the man, - you would have died otherwise.

- It felt on my leg, not my head. - he replied. - I did not hit my head.

We turned our head away from the nurse almost synchronously. She is a triage nurse. We had to remain polite or we will be in waiting room till the morning.

Terms

Road rules including NSW Road Rules define strict and clear rules how to use road. There is no space for what ever situations that can lead to accident. By the definition every collision has a defined liability. Usage of term accident to define something that by definition can not be an accident is and insult to people who suffer as a result of traffic collision. Wikipedia provides a short summary of criticism on using demeaning term.

World Health Organisation uses term road traffic injury to emphasis the human costs of mostly avoidable suffering.

We use three terms in Lithuanian language to describe event on the road:

1. "Avarija" - fault, breakdown, collision - general term for event that usually means some interruption of the traffic flow.
2. "Autoįvykis" - car crash - when a car hits something on the road, can be another car, persons, tree and so on. Now it is replaced with eismo įvykis.

After long consideration I chose to use term road traffic injury. At first I used term traffic injury, but I found my self explaining what exactly I mean. So, I chose longer term and slightly redundant term, but it saves some time.

There are many terms that can be used for road collision, but none of them is accident:

1. car crash - to highlight damage on a car
2. road incident - if you are not aware what has happened
3. road collision - if you know that there was collision
4. road traffic injury or traffic injury - if you are talking about impact on someone's health.

NSW

NSW Road Rules do not define penalties for road rules offences. The penalties are defined in separate legislation for demerits, penalties and offences. The collision is called motor vehicle crash and the act of causing crash is called offense.

The only time term accident is used in NSW road rules is for the defense in criminal courts when road rules offense was caused by accident, meaning that offender obeyed all rules and breaking of the rules was caused by unforeseeable external force. See rule Sec 10.1.

Removing accountability

I noticed that insurance companies strongly push the term accident. It makes sense. It removes accountability. This way dangerous drivers are not held accountable and this increases danger. This leads to higher demand for insurance. The higher demand, the higher profit for insurance.

Insurance industry is 7-th largest industry in the world. No surprise that it is able to promote terms and attitude most suitable for them.

It seems that historically term accident was pushed by automobile industry, but in my experience that is insurance and their lawyers who promote this term now. Insurance industry is about 3 times larger than automotive industry.

Offensive term use - Short explanation

This is a short email I prepared for the the cases when I contact people who are trying to help but are using term accident.

I apologise in advance if this sounds exaggerated, but it is not my intention to proceed in this way. I wanted to discuss the use of the word “accident” and I hope the road collision isn’t referred to as such moving forward.

Since the injury in 2015, I went through a very difficult and retraumatizing personal injury claim and during that time the word “accident” was offensive as used to withdraw any liability that came from that incident. So, I would kindly ask to not refer to the event as an accident but road traffic injury, event, incident, motor vehicle crash are appropriate terms. I used road traffic injury as recommended by the World Health Organisation to emphasize the human costs of mostly avoidable suffering.

You can find more information at https://roadtrafficinjury.net/index.php/Road_Traffic_Injury_vs_Accident (the links to various sources work there).