My favourite is during terrorist attacks in Europe, it's always like "car attacks crowd". Like the car's wife had left it and it had decided to go out with a bang.

Damn cars why do they do that! Ironically soon cars may start actually doing it.

The problem is, there isn't much initial facts to base on, other than that a vehicle has plowed into a crowd. In the early 30-60 minutes, you often don't even know how many people died and how many are injured because emergency services are still working on rescue (alive people) and recovery (dead people).

Maybe it's political or religious terrorism, maybe it's suicide-by-cop, maybe it's a generic mental health issue (think schizophrenics whose head voice tells them to commit violence), maybe it's a health issue (heart attack, driver floors the gas pedal), maybe it's a streetrace gone wrong, maybe it's a DUI, maybe it's a mechanical issue (loss of brake/steering), maybe it's a geriatric driver who just doesn't have any idea where he even is, maybe it's a driver blindly following Maps and ignoring the policeman winking at him, thus not noticing he's heading right for a rally.

You see, the list of issues why a car plows into a crowd is very very long, and often it takes the police hours to determine what's going on. They gotta interview bystanders and victims, they gotta obtain and review camera footage, possibly search the driver's home and digital devices - because unlike Twitter pseudo-journalists and click/ragebait "news" media, police can normally be held accountable if they claim something in public that doesn't turn out to be true.

I think usually the vehicle has not, say, been flung unoccupied into a crowd by an oversized slingshot experiment gone wrong.

So it'd be nice if they'd say like "a man has ploughed into a crowd" - we'll safely assume he didn't use an actual plough since I hear those are fairly slow.

It does make a difference regarding people viewing news outlets as informers rather than an arm of some kind of agenda.

If you say "a man has ploughed into a crowd", you'll get the usual suspects shouting "why don't you state THE RELIGION/THE ETHNICITY of the man". We've been through this in Germany too often, the racists immediately come out of the sewer spouting their garbage.

That seems a less important bother than say that a man has ploughed into a crowd.

Well, not in Europe because that's the culture, but it objectively is.

And I mean, it's not like the racists hear "a car" and think "oh it was just a car on its lonesome, not like driven by a person from [group that I hate]", do they...

Normally it’s the terrorists that are so bright that they fire rockets into their own territory. So, “rocket flew” is actually being nice to them.