It’s No Accident

Nonews story ever began saying, "A person was killed yesterday when hecollided with a bullet moving at high speed in the opposite direction."Yet that's exactly how news stories about traffic "accidents" oftenbegin.

Our habit of dehumanizing the actions of cars tends tocreate assumptions that their actions are not actually someone'sresponsibility. A driver hit and killed some people in another car inCulpeper. It's extremely unlikely his car magically malfunctioned. Andeven if it did, we don't engage in the same linguistic contortions tosay, for example, that a police officer's bullet impacted a suspectedrobber, who had himself been holding a gun which fired into someoneelse earlier in the day. That would be silly. So is this.