The "didactic" tone is quite patent: don't jaywalk, drive and use machinery with care, use adequate protective gear...
Take a closer look at the "accident" reports you see in newspapers. It's disgusting how many times reports of people and children getting hit on sidewalks, sitting on benches, etc is spun as their fault for not getting out of the way of the person driving the car!!
There's been a bit of a grassroots push to get journalists to stop calling them accidents and start calling them crashes, so drivers aren't automatically pardoned in reader's minds.
The most recent one I saw: "A trooper-involved fatal shooting in Leonardtown that ended in the death of a 16-year-old."
Both the "trooper-related" and the "ended in" passive voice to avoid saying "a trooper shot and killed a child."
At least in some cases (more often than not, as far as I know) a police officer is called by someone who noticed a dangerous/chaotic situation, and the officer isn't the cause of it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/14/us/peyton-ham-maryland-tr...
Are you suggesting that they shouldn't have changed it, because the kid was at fault?
"A trooper-involved fatal shooting in Leonardtown that ended in the death of a 16-year-old" could mean anything. It could mean that someone shot at a trooper, missed, and hit the kid. It could mean that a trooper shot at a dog in self-defense, and a kid was accidentally killed by the ricocheted bullet. It could even mean that someone shot at a trooper and the kid died of a heart attack from the noise.
"A state trooper shot and killed.." describes what happened. It's factual. It doesn't assign fault. If you think it creates too much of a gut-reaction that a trooper killing a 16-year-old is a problem, well, maybe that's a good thing because it suggests we should have more options to prevent that from happening. And if you think it's a good thing that the trooper shot him, well, the headline satisfies that as well.
No. "A trooper-involved fatal shooting..." is indeed blurry, and in my opinion the active voice isn't much better because for many (most?) readers it conveys that the cop action was fully intentional, however in such a context things are much more complicated than that.
It doesn't assign fault, indeed, but a more adequate title may be "In a chaotic situation a trooper shot and killed..." because when someone points a gun at you the danger grows as you take time to assess the situation, there is no way to assess from a distance if someone is or isn't able to mount an attack, the "Tueller rule"...
That intent may have been an overreaction. It may have been a mistake. It may have been based on an incorrect understanding of the situation. It may have even been justified. But regardless, the trooper did intend to kill.
My point is that a press title "In a chaotic situation a trooper shot and killed..." seems more appropriate to me. Do you agree?
This looks like a denial to me. And no, I don't agree that softening a factual sentence with a single sided context is more appropriate. The entire point is to stop privileging the police's perspective as if their choices are completely circumstantial, as they have been abusing that trust.
Is stating that the situation was "chaotic" privileging police's perspective (which is sourced: "Col. Woodrow Jones, the state police secretary").
Dismissing every police statement because some of them were lies may be dangerous if it leads to even more "esprit de corps" (the very cause of many of such lies) among cops, or to less good guys in the police force (they usually don't want to join a despised group).
I see your point about othering and it's valid even for just balancing my own views. But the larger issue is that trust in the entire institution is failing.
When you have one cop murdering someone, three more standing around watching, a entire department that doesn't arrest the murder squad, a union that protects the whole lot, and a wider community that defends the whole miscarriage of justice - you don't have "one bad cop", but rather a popular culture of corruption.
Now certainly it isn't the case that every police department has had a case like that and reacted the same way. But all too many have, and if the actual good cops want to stop their institution from being indicted with a uniform brush, then they need to start speaking up about their criminal colleagues and actually enforcing the law even when the perp is wearing a uniform.
"Chaotic", for me, conveys that there is no known way to always adequately solve this sort of problem ("911 calls ((...)) about a 'guy acting suspicious' who the callers thought had a gun"), however I reckon that interpreting it as some pseudo-justification is possible.
In a similar vein one may interpret the George Floyd case as exposing a "popular culture of corruption". One may also think that such cases have many causes, just like most major technological disasters result from a chain of causes (multiple and redundant safeties, however in some rare cases something isn't properly handled). A main cause may be that speaking up about a criminal colleague is only possible if you know for sure that he is guilty, meaning that you probably are a witness, and in such a case a colleague of the culprit. There are many reasons for teammates to cover-up each other. For example they may all be guilty of something (establishing a "popular culture of corruption"), or they may think that their colleague is guilty but should be pardoned given his merits (somewhat acting as judges). Some configurations of the rotten apple's team forbid any upper stratum (department, union, community...) to work adequately, as they will systematically amplify the testimony of those teammates.
You don't have "one bad cop", but rather a non-neglectable probability for his teammates to avoid speaking out about his reprehensible acts, and also unreasonable hopes about the ability of upper strata to attain to the truth.
In theory we may alleviate this by establishing larger teams and/or frequently changing (rotating) their members, hoping that it will reduce complicit distortions. In practice this leads to a new set of problems, not only related to cost but also to sheer practical efficiency: a team larger and/or populated with members not used to work with each other cannot be as efficient as a small (but sufficient) and more tightly made one.
I have difficulty in believing anyone in their right mind would victim blame someone sitting on a bench for not getting out of the way of a car. This reeks of urban legend or motivated anti-motorist propoganda. The motor vehicle would have to have completely departed from the designated motorway and would as a result be completely at fault. Failure to respond to signal is also the motorist's fault, and even when out of compliance signalwise on a crosswalk, the pedestrian has right-of-way. It's right in the driver's manual for most States in the U.S.
Unless we're talking somewhere with much more fluid road laws. For the record, I've been that pedestrian getting clipped several times, and people on bicycles make me so paranoid in city driving, I've been known to lower windows to try to verbally communicate.
My issue is generally with other motorists for the most part.
>Automatically pardoned in reader's minds
There was a time I'd say you were over stating tilted journalism's influence. Nowadays I'm not so sure anymore.
Notice how half of the article is dedicated towards blaming people for entering crosswalks when they have right of way, just because a signal is changing?
Here's the kicker: the 10 (!!) people injured were on the freaking sidewalk! Why is this diatribe of blaming people for entering a crosswalk even in the article??
This isn't just urban legend or anti-motorist propaganda (really? come on). There are quite a few studies out there that look in to this and it's a real phenomenon. I don't have time right now to dig out individual studies to link, but they're fairly easy to find.
Money shot:
>Two vehicles smashed into each other and then into a group of people and a lamp post at the intersection at about 1:20 p.m.
>According to police, both vehicles were travelling west on Lake Shore Blvd. W. when one vehicle turned left across the path of the other to proceed south on Bay St.
So the actual injuries to pedestrians were an example of collateral damage from people screwing up while behind the wheel.
The author does embark on a secondary train of thought, highlighting a bit of trivia that people may not know abouut the local traffic regulations:
>How pedestrians interpret the newer countdown-type pedestrian signals is becoming a major concern for police, said Const. Hugh Smith of traffic services. Many don’t really understand what the timer means.
>Apparently their handbook states that once the countdown starts, they assume no new pedestrians should enter the crosswalk, thereby allowing vehicles to execute turns once the initial group clears.
I didn't personally read it as blaming the pedestrians for getting hurt, as it seemed like a more Public Service Announcement sort of thing tacked on the end, but I do agree that that could have been transitioned to or arranged better.
I've just been around placeswith some fairly militant anti-motoring sentiment (like do away with all motorways type), so I assure you it is a thing. I think Britain was having some troubles with it in London, and it's growing in popularity around some urban centers in the U.S.
It tends to go hand-in-hand with zoning (which is a nightmare in and of itself), and has a great deal of impact on your ability to freely get places in the U.S., which is why I always try to be sensitive to trying to counterweight the "change it now" crowd to "incremental implementation".
I don't mind public transit, but I'm very againnst throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't have any news stories at the ready, but next time you see an article like 'Man, 30, dead after being hit by SUV' take a look at the comment section. I guarantee there will be multiple people asking if he was outside of a crosswalk, or noting how people need to get off their phones when walking. There's usually an absence of talking about the driver, because usually they are not mentioned apart from 'the driver stayed on scene and is cooperating with the police'. Advocates of 'crash not accident' would like the headline to be rewritten such as 'Driver hits and kills 30-year-old man with SUV'. A headline like that hopefully leads people to question whether the driver was speeding, on their phone, etc.
https://www.roadpeace.org/download/crash-not-accident-briefi...
That is until we get L4(?) autonomous cars. People should not be getting hit by cars in 2021, why is this not solved yet?! C’mon car manufacturers, use your billions in revenue to solve these ‘human driver error resulting in death’ class of problems instead of distracting drivers even more by removing usable tactile buttons for affordance-less touchscreens and shaving off a few cents in production costs.
I read a story 3 days ago. 2 days ago, I'm about to back up - but I get out of my car and look for my kid (she was safe).
I think it also played a role in my purchase and use of safety goggles.
I too experienced the phenomenon of feeling the media was downplaying the extent of the sheer and utter devastation that comes with war and invading countries. That video shook me good and still haunts me to this day… It made me aware of the atrocities of life and wanting to be more involved in politics to make the world a less barbaric place.
Anyone else experience this?
Overall it could have been much worse; I have friends that have much worse stories. My dog had a handful of puncture wounds that healed up, and he is fine now. I am pretty sure I had PTSD or something close to it; mainly it's waking from nightmares of the scenario, and thinking of my dogs scream still makes me shudder/feel sick. I also now walk outside and check my yard before letting the dogs out and stay out there with them the entire time. My neighbor is working on getting a fence now that the spring is here, but even then I don't know if I will leave the dogs out alone. It was a minor encounter with violence, but it was enough to shake me up and change some habits.
Keep your dogs on a leash in public people!
Suffice to say I am firmly in favor of wearing safety equipment even for "simple" jobs, and trying to avoid pissing people off.
I think the basic structure of a leader that theoretically has absolute power, but practically speaking is a kind of empty suit, is actually pretty generalizable and common. Japan is an extreme example, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Iraq war was the result of a similar combination of institutional momentum and leadership vacuum[0].
I am not a native speaker of English so my apology if the question sounds strange: but does that mean that you feel that you owe your country some time spent in the army? ("I served in the army as everyone else" vs "I was employed in the army because of my choice").
Your last sentence rather points to the former but I wanted to make sure.
Couldn't agree more.
When I was a 7 years old, a road near my home was undergo an expansion. The work involves a lots of heavy and big machines, including heavy trucks etc. During that time, me and almost all other kid was warned to not go near those machines, "Don't play near those things, it's dangerous". But none of us knows why, so none of us listened, at least not carefully.
Many years later, after I've grow up and start to understand the value of lives, one day I stumble upon a video showing a middle school aged student ridding a bike down a road, and got crashed by a turning lorry. And the lorry driver didn't even notice the student until a terrified security guard yelled him to stop. That kid was crashed at the left abdomen, then the wheel rolled over his chest and head, all with in 3 seconds of time.
That moment is when I suddenly remembered the warning that I got almost 20 years ago: Don't play near those things, it's dangerous. Everything is so real now, because it is, it's just that I didn't receive it at it's full meaning back then, and that video, completed it.
Video like those really works, because now you saw it with your own eyes. You feel the brutality without a layer of filter, and without even a slight distortion, and then you know it for real.
Unfortunately, this is a relatively common way for cyclists to die. The easy way to prevent it is to never try to pass a truck/lorry near an intersection.
Sad thing is, most people I know don't know about anything of it, they still assumes that the driver will take care of everything.
It's one thing to have a driver's ed instructor, your plant manager or someone else in a position of authority who presumably knows what they're talking about and has at least some semblance of skin in the game show you those things and lecture you about safety.
Listening to a bunch of Redditors and HNers and Youtube commenters, etc, etc. grandstand nonstop about safety, safety, safety, safety, even when the relevance of and pretext for such grandstanding is very flimsy is counterproductive.
You can't post about <subject> on the internet these days without some jerk swooping in and making some borderline irrelevant comment about safety in order to score cheap virtue points which then derails everything. Heck, just discussing it at the work lunch table there's a 50-50 chance the same derailment happens in real life.
Being told you need to worry about not electrocuting yourself when changing a tire on Prius or you need to worry about carbon monoxide when lighting a single candle doesn't make people care about safety. It rightly makes them annoyed and suspicious.
I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them.
I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example, a bad car crash, can really give you a healthy fear of these dangers.