It seems like an awesome job for someone with the right set of preferences. Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range. Half your time on long road trips. Huge responsibility, but extremely low chance you'll ever need to actually do much. Kind of like being a cop who never has to arrest or deal with people.
If the truck is still operating afterwards, I expect they don't stop - they let another vehicle that is full of federal agents from the convoy deal with it.
the word accident by no means conveys inevitability to me.
ac·ci·dent /ˈaksədənt/ noun: accident; plural noun: accidents 1. an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.
So.. unless we're talking about intentional automotive manslaughter or some equivalent, I think 'accident' applies well to 'unintentional,unexpected,unfortunate incidents', which there tends to be quite a few of related to motor-vehicles.
What terms do you want to use? mayhem and murder? Those both describe motive that just isn't present in most cases of motor-vehicle accident.
* violence : behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. *
'violence' conveys yet another motive, an intent to hurt. Another no-go as far as suitable candidates, as far as i'm concerned. Automotive accidents do not usually come about as a result of a negative motive towards another human.
They're accidental, in most cases.
Violence is a confusing and disputed term, often bogged down by the visual of two sides, one striking, one struck.
Systemic violence is maybe more interesting here because it acknowledges that the system involves violence by design. A certain amount of violence is accepted because of a prevailing narrative. Here specifically one of fault and blame.
IE the driver wasn’t paying attention / the pedestrian was doing something silly
Systemic violence acknowledges that the design of road infrastructure can be made safer but we choose to be ok with a certain amount of violence.
Take hospital check lists as an example. By using check lists for procedures staff reduce the chance of mistakes.
The event is still a mistake but we chose to put more energy into preventing it.
But this is based on the idea that people have just as much right to be in the street as drivers do. Most people disagree with me on this, outside of urbanists and perhaps Dutch people.
Intent is a funny thing to determine though, but the same article I linked above and provided an excerpt from also deals with how there is a "degree of intention", either from other road users, or from engineers and officials that are tasked with managing traffic and road safety.
---
Drivers aren't out there aiming for pedestrians and cyclists, so how does intention factor in?
UCLA's Madeline Brozen argues it can be traced back to both failure to follow road safety laws and a lack of understanding about how dangerous driving a car is — especially since unsafe speed is the top contributing factor in L.A. traffic deaths.
Research shows that a pedestrian struck by a driver going 20 mph has an 80% chance of survival. If that driver accelerates to 40 mph and hits a pedestrian, the victim's chance of surviving drops to just 10%.
"The act of going above the speed limit or going fast [in unsafe] road conditions...that is an intention," Brozen said. "When someone is driving in a way that can kill someone, they are creating a risk."
According to John Yi, another "degree of intention" in traffic deaths falls on car-centric society and L.A.'s leaders, who are "intentional about what we're building and what we're not building."
They aren't intending to do it - one might even call it an accident.
The term accident in this context is understood to mean exactly what happened, which is that the event wasn't immediately intended- not that nobody is at fault.
I’m not sure why intention matters in calling a car crash or wreck exactly that instead of an accident. When an airliner goes down we don’t call it an accident. Midair collision, plane crash, etc.
When planes flew into the WTC was that an aviation accident? Do you see how the terms used change this?
“Car accident” implies a normal state of behavior and softens and normalizes what is a pretty crazy thing to happen. Calling it a wreck or crash doesn’t imply any sort of culpability, yet denormalizes these interactions.
If someone willfully ignored ATC in a plane and crashed the plane would you call that an accident? No? Why do we not say the same when someone drives a car over the speed limit and crashes it? Why is that an accident but plane crashes aren’t?
If you take a step back it’s easy to see society has been modified to think of car crashes differently.
The term accident doesn’t necessarily imply “normal”, but rather “no intent”.
9/11 would not qualify as an accident because the intent of the hijackers was to crash the plane.
You say car crashes are treated differently but your examples imply the opposite! That car crashes are treated identically to other mishaps which are classed as accidental or not by the intent of the actor(s).
And why is it that everyone here is defending using the term "accident" by suggesting that car crash or wreck is not a correct description?
In drunk driving for example, you intently operated the vehicle impaired and caused a crash. If you drive over the speed limit you are intently operating the vehicle recklessly. We do on occasion use the term vehicular homicide when describing these actions, but it depends on whether someone was hurt or not, even with the same action being taken (drunk/speeding/etc.).
My point of contention is that "accident" assumes no intent or reckless behavior. Crash and wreck just describe what happened.
There's a reason that accident was injected into our vocabulary. That reason is that we generally accept that accidents happen in society. We don't accept crashes or wrecks. If a lot of car crashes are happening and society doesn't accept them, you better figure out a way to re-categorize them.
An accident. Accidents can occur from reckless or negligent behavior. That is not the same as intentionally hitting another car and the legal concept of “criminal negligence”[1] covers this exact distinction.
> Most crimes involve intentional conduct. For example, in some states, the offense of assault can be committed by the defendant intentionally using or attempting to use force against someone, as with a punch or kick…some crimes involve reckless or negligent, rather than intentional, conduct. The term "reckless" essentially describes a defendant's simultaneous understanding and disregard of a substantial risk of harm. An example is a defendant having previous DUI convictions and understanding that driving drunk can harm or kill people, but nevertheless getting behind the wheel while intoxicated and causing a fatal accident.
So in both a legal and common sense understanding of intentionality, it clearly is not.
> And why is it that everyone here is defending using the term "accident" by suggesting that car crash or wreck is not a correct description?
No one is saying crash or wreck are not also accurate. If you want to call it a crash, go right ahead, but you are objectively wrong to say that me calling it an accident is not a correct description.
> In drunk driving for example, you intently operated the vehicle impaired and caused a crash. If you drive over the speed limit you are intently operating the vehicle recklessly. We do on occasion use the term vehicular homicide when describing these actions...My point of contention is that "accident" assumes no intent or reckless behavior.
Once again, you are confusing intentional recklessness and intentional outcome. “Vehicular homicide, also known as vehicular manslaughter, is the reckless or negligent killing of another through the use of a vehicle.” [3] The resulting accident is still unintentional by both legal and common sense standards. The word “accident” does not assume no reckless behavior, and it does not assume that there were no intentional decisions that contributed to it.
[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-criminal-neglig...
[2] https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/vehicular-...
[3] https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/vehicular-...
When people engage in reckless endangerment, there's a crime for that: reckless endangerment. When the driving was stupid, but not to the level of criminal, there's a lawsuit for that.
"Accident" also very nicely preserves the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
That's the disagreement. There are many drivers on the road that I would assert, when their behavior does finally inevitably land them into a wreck, did so deliberately. Now, I am sure that if you ask them, they would claim that they did not "intend" to get into an accident, but the utterly reckless behavior with which some people choose to operate a ton of steel hurtling down the road at 60+ mph sings a very, very different tune.
(Now, I'd also accept just a simple "car wreck" or "collision", as suggested by a sibling, which doesn't assume that there was wrong doing, at least, unless the facts suggest otherwise.)
It's a result of negligence, impairment of intellectual functioning, or a number of things other than an accident.
The word crash covers such an incident far, far better. (Edit: Collision works as well, having read nearby comments).
For proof, watch any recent Dashcam Owners Australia monthly compilation. Most of these are not accidents.
But accident is a civil term, not a legal term. Legally there's a spectrum of culpability from driver innocence (the brakes failed, the lights failed, a bob cat fell on the windshield) to premeditated murder, with negligence and recklessness in between.
There may still be legal responsibility elsewhere. Did the brakes fail because the garage made a mistake?
Of course you can have an accident because you were reckless. That doesn't mean you wanted to kill someone. It means you were taking avoidable and unnecessary risks and didn't get away with it.
i have also seen RTC or road traffic collision used - however, this seems inaccurate when describing, say, a vehicle skidding or sliding out of control on the road but stopping without actually hitting anything, thus startling a pedestrian who then reacts by steppng backwards and falling off a bridge?
0. https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/research-and-learning/key-a...
If an asshole shifts his ass from car to bike, he will start riding on the pavement in places that are absolutely unsuitable for that, or on hiking trails that are absolutely unsuitable for that. And I say "he", because it was 100 per cent men. (I am a man too, for the record.) Gals seem to be quite a bit careful.
Bullshit. You notice reckless cyclists more because they're more unusual, that's all. The statistics for the rate at which pedestrians are killed or seriously injured show that it's overwhelmingly drivers who are putting you in danger.
That is it.
When you walk regularly, you find paths from A to B that minimize your contact with cars to a level crossing or two. (Might be different in the countryside or in cities whose walkability is poor). So your chance of getting hit by a car are fairly low and you only really need to pay attention when you cross the street. For the rest of the time, you can afford to daydream or wander in thoughts a bit.
Once people learn to ride their bikes on pavements, it means the need for constant vigilance.
Biking needs its own infrastructure, separate from both pedestrians and cars. The needs and speeds are just different.
Bicyclists often have this view that they are above traffic laws and break them: >he will start riding on the pavement in places that are absolutely unsuitable for that, or on hiking trails that are absolutely unsuitable for that.
In my state, cars and bikes share the road and have to follow the same laws.
There is a stop sign at the bottom of a hill near my house, I have never seen a car drive through it, plenty of bike don't stop.
Those assholes when driving are the people who ignore the no right on red junctions, undertake slow moving traffic, use the wrong lanes on roundabouts, park in blue badge spots, throw litter out the windows etc. They're going to be assholes no matter what their mode of transport is.
They are similar in the same way being clawed by a cat is similar to being mauled by a tiger.
Please do not downplay the risks of being hit by a 120 kg+ object moving at, say, 10-15 mph. It is similar to the risk that the cyclist himself faces if he suddenly falls of his bike, namely, brain damage from cracking your skull against the pavement. Cyclists wear biking helmets to protect themselves against this possibly fatal event. Sudden falls can be fairly dangerous, especially for older individuals. Maybe not a tiger, but a cougar. Definitely not a home cat.
Not everyone can dodge in time. Some people are absent minded (and I would say this is their right when walking on a pavement). Some are old and arthritic. Some are kids. Some are blind or deaf. They need to be reasonably safe on a pavement, which means not sharing it with another sort of traffic that moves much faster than them.
I am all for biking/cycling, but it really needs its own infrastructure. Most developed countries can afford it, it is not expensive to build a dedicated biking lane.
Please do not imply this is remotely comparable to the risks of being hit by a car. It is not. In that context, downplaying the risks of being hit by a bicycle is absolutely correct.
> Cyclists wear biking helmets to protect themselves against this possibly fatal event.
Cyclists in countries with decent road laws, such as the Netherlands, do not generally wear helmets. Cyclists in some countries wear helmets, mainly to protect themselves from bad laws passed by ignorant non-cyclists.
The former reduces risk for the wearer, the latter increases risk for cyclists as a whole indirectly.
The thing is, where I live, as a pedestrian, I almost never share the same surface with cars. Only when I need to cross the street, which is, say, three times a mile. For the rest of the time, I am in relative safety of the pavement. (Cars running into pedestrians on pavements, though not impossible, is a fairly rare occurrence and I have never seen one in my almost 43 years of age.)
This is a major difference in the entire risk calculation.
2. Possibly the psychological need to overcome adversity. Someone living in a nice neighborhood, threatened neither by gangs nor by rogue cops, seeks surrogate problems to conquer. In a few weird cases, it turns out like this and Twitter will amplify it, because Twitter loves (even hostile) attention and engagament.
This is a foolish statement.
The outcome of the overwhelming majority of traffic accident was 100% property damage and 0% violence.
Car on car and car on object fender benders where nobody is hurt outnumber accidents with injuries by an order of magnitude.
The really weird part is, what are you to make of it if you genuinely like a position, but there is also a well-funded campaign to push it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
No. Even if everything here you say is true, no. We're not going to change the usage because you think it's wrong and are on a crusade to change it.
It’s marketing and branding to downplay one of the greatest sources of premature death, wasted money, and negative externalities that exists. That way we can keep buying cars for no good reason and commute while we sit at home and isolate ourselves from our fellow Americans when we aren’t driving.
Responding to the person your responding to with “I don’t like it!1!1!” when they provided, ya know, some reasoning, is kind of a poor response. What’s a good reason to call them accidents instead of wrecks besides “this is what I’m used to”?
I’m open minded.
Accident implies it's not premeditated or deliberate, which, i'd wager, is the case of the vast majority of road incidents. That doesn't absolve drivers of guilt if they were in the wrong or doing something wrong at the time. But it does mean it wasn't deliberate.
Edit: You also forget that things like wildlife, mechanical failures and other things outside the control of a driver can be the cause of car crashes as well.
The vast majority of collisions are caused by driver recklessness. (Yes, a few are caused by mechanical issues etc. as you say - but driver recklessness (e.g. speeding) is the biggest factor). Calling it an "accident" does kind of diminish their culpability.
In reality drivers rely on models and predictions of other road users' behavior, and are committed by inertia to a course which requires those predictions to be true. We can tolerate more or less uncertainty, bigger or smaller margins, but a speed so slow that you can be sure of stopping in time for the most unlikely development right in front of you, is also a speed which is pretty much useless for transportation. The need to take this risk in order to go about your life is built into the whole system of urban planning and not something for which a particular driver is blameworthy. A driver becomes blameworthy to the extent that their tolerances were unusually tight for the situation. But even loose tolerances are exceeded some of the time.
I'm mainly reasoning back from the fact that drivers are causing so many premature deaths, yes. "If you're killing this many people then you must be being reckless", but I think that's sound logic? But also if we look at things like e.g. compliance with relevant laws, that seems to suggest that drivers are reckless as a matter of course - drivers flout speed limits all the time, to the point that they will often try to argue that this crime is somehow a non-crime because everyone does it.
One reason dashcams are so popular is people like to exploit the insurance presumption of guilt towards the rear-ender by getting in front someone and then slamming the brakes. Video which shows the scammer acting unreasonably to put themselves in the way can turn the tables.
Nothing about “accident” implies lack of culpability. By your and other’s logic, essentially nothing can be an accident as ultimately almost everything is cause and effect. Your dropping the milk on the floor wasn’t an “accident”, it was the effect of you not paying attention to the task of carrying the milk carton and being reckless about it (as an example).
If you were exercising reasonable caution when carrying the milk, it was probably an accident. If you were being reckless, then it wasn't.
The fact that drivers are such an overwhelmingly disproportionate cause of premature death suggests that they do not generally exercise the kind of reasonable caution that we'd expect decent people to use in everyday life.
In that world there may even be someone on HN asking everyone to change the term to 'car accident' to prevent these innocent drivers being unfairly characterized as causing intentional or negligent harm.
The issue I see is “car accident” tends to normalize the destruction caused by cars. It’s a public relations campaign. Oil and gas, and other industries could use the lesson it seems. Don’t call Deep Water Horizon a malfunction or problem. Just say hey it’s just an accident. Nobody intended anything bad so what’s the problem? Rest easy, go back to sleep. Just an accident...
Nobody cares that car wrecks are a leading cause of premature death amongst teenagers for example. It’s all just an accident.
They care when you change the narrative back to what it truly is. Unnecessary and premature deaths due to intentional design decisions and subsequent, avoidable but easy to predict car crashes.
I'm not sure what that should be called, but 'car accident' seems like it doesn't describe it very well.
Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/08034/...
A car crash absolutely fits the definition. You sound like you want the definition of "accident" to be something other than what it is.
Yes, people are careless driving. Yes, that causes problems (and even death) that should have been avoided. But that still fits the definition of accident.
Otherwise, you're seriously giving an escape hatch to say, drunk driving, because "Hey I was just carelessly driving. It was just an accident. I didn't intend to cause harm, damage, or loss when I drank all of that alcohol and accident my car into someone else. 'Whoops'"
Anyway, let's say these are all accidents. Ok. We can also still call them car crashes and wrecks and that would be more accurate because these terms don't assume intention but merely describe what has taken place.
That right there makes it pretty attractive. Lots of people do those things for fun. If that's half your "workload", it totally makes sense to do a job like this, especially if you're not a city person since that's a solid salary if your not in a high cost of living area.
given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x (didn't lose or they were quickly recovered) I think there is no credible/feasible/capable interest/threat for the nukes.
Serious question (in more ways than one): do we really know that to be true? How?
I'm making two assumptions:
1. you don't steal a nuke unless you're going to sell it or use it
2. you don't buy a nuke unless you're going to use it (for blackmail or to blow something up)
And (2) would have been easily noticed.
Here [1] is a 2004 press release from the International Science and Technology Center, whose first objective is to "Provide weapons scientists in the CIS the opportunity to redirect their talents to peaceful activities." Page 9 describes their involvement in the Avogadro Project.
Here [2] is the project description on the ISTC website.
[0]https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/presseaktuelles/journals-magazines...
[1]https://www.istc.int/upload/files/6yoyjz8txt44oc0g8cs8.pdf
[2]https://istc.ru/istc/sc.nsf/html/projects.htm?open&id=2630
It has been the plot of several movies/books/etc.
That being said, the quoted line kind of raises the question: how do we know?
I suppose given the use of the word “feel” the GP doesn’t actually know, but that’s not really my point anyway. My point is rather – if there in fact were incidents involving these nuclear material couriers, would it make the news or remain secret as a matter of national security?
I dunno, I feel like I'm living in a future designed by folks who looked at Robocop, Starship Troopers, and a few other bits of dystopian sci-fi and instead of treating it as a warning decided that it would make a swell instruction manual.
Every politican has skin in the game (mandatory military service for gaining the right to vote or be voted for)
No racism or sexism or other discrimination, at least there are no traces for that in either the movie nor the novel.
If you don't want to join the military: No problem, you don't have any major disadvantages (besides no political participation), see the wealthy family of the protagonist.
Science seems to flourish
Ehm... sorry for the digression... what were we talking about?
But the movie was a bit different - maybe you watched the german version? That was a bit softer - the teacher didn't made jokes about the anhilation of Hiroshima there.
It was a deeply militarized society. Brutal. Top down. But yes, at least the politicians had to be part of that, too. (but in reality ... I think you can be in the military and be far away from any danger, like Bush was a fighter pilot, but not deployed at Vietnam.)
It literally starts out by re-contexualising the ex-millitary putsch attempts in Weimar Germany as a Good Thing.
And I always kind of assumed, that Bush watched Swordfish (where the bad guys are only bad, so they can fight terrorism, so are the "good guys") and would have gone on a war on terror, even if 911 would not have happened.
Burst all you want, but it doesn't mean my comment wasn't true. You can want this conversation to only go one direction (real life), but it's the internet and conversations can diverge. The fact that it has been involved in plots is still relevant. Some people might actually find it interesting even if it steers the convo in a manner you don't approve.
To me, as a native English speaker, B is clearly implying (with their "technically true" statement) the statement "Event X happens a lot in fiction, therefore I infer that Event X happens a lot in real life". Statements are read in the context of the preceding conversation.
Although, it might be a bit relevant. You feel cooler when you tell people what you do if it's fictionally cool, even if in real life it's not all that great.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)
This is probably the least risky OTR trucking job ever since you have so many people making sure everything goes right and you don't have dispatch pushing you to do insane shifts that stretch the law.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/14253/the-us-moves-nuk...
"The expose painted a dismal picture of an overworked and underpaid organization where over a third of the personnel would put in more than 900 hours of overtime each year, equal to more than 35 extra days on the job. Couriers and agents spend most of that time on the road on long, boring drives unable to stop for protracted periods or even leave their vehicles in many circumstances. If they get pulled over by local law enforcement for some reason, the truck drivers aren't even allowed to speak to the police without the security force commander being present during the conversation.
Underscoring these issues, in 2010, the Department of Energy's Inspector General cataloged 16 alcohol-related incidents within OST in the preceding three years, including an incident of public intoxication where a courier was arrested and another where two employees ended up in police custody after getting into a drunken bar brawl. The report uncovered New Mexico court records showing the office's top executive had gotten a DUI after police came across him parked on a sidewalk apparently drinking in the car with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent."
Sounds a lot like gambling auditing TBH.
The truck manufacturer has been out of business long enough now that seeing a surviving example is relatively rare.
Or they provide benzodiazepines on the job now?
Is that based on experience?
Yeah pretty much. Ask any government worker why they're still working for the government and they'll tell you something about benefits and stability.
Public sector is serious brain drain
The counterpoints are people so uninspired and risk averse that it is the same as brain drain, and a subset of them are the people that began with a “serving the public” ideal and accidentally accumulated too many obligations by the time they figured out they wanted to live in a nicer neighborhood or send their children to a good college
The good talent are people that took a plea deal for non prosecution that included public service
Wait, wat? This is a thing? Did you mean "community service" instead of "public service"? Or do you mean people like Frank Abagnale?
I suspect the biggest general public barrier to entry here would be competing against a glut of qualified applicants with 5-/10-point veterans' preference, assuming time was taken to put notification hooks in place for immediate action on job postings that'll close almost as soon as they're announced.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/downloads/nnsas-demo-pay-system-...
For the amount of training required for this job and personal risk, I’m shocked at the low salary band.