Car Accident or Crash? Why What You Call It Matters

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly all car crashes result from driver behavior, such as drinking, distracted driving, and other risky activity. Given this fact, calling the majority of roadway incidents “accidents” has become controversial because it implies one of two things: 

1. No one is taking responsibility for the traffic incident, and the car crash was not caused by a driver’s mistake or negligence but was simply an unfortunate event.  
2. The at-fault driver did not mean to harm anyone or cause the incident, so it was just an accident. 

Because the word “accident” suggests that no one is at fault, many safety advocates are troubled by calling crashes that are caused by something like distracted driving an “accident.” For example, drivers know better than to use their cell phone while they are behind the wheel, but many people still make the careless decision to do it — which leads to nearly 3,500 deaths and nearly 400,000 injuries every year. And those numbers are rising. 

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Saying these are just “accidents” takes the blame off of the people who cause crashes by choosing to drive distracted. A similar attitude may be why efforts to increase traffic safety and decrease injuries and fatalities on the road are ineffective. 

And while most people don’t intend to cause a wreck or hurt others on the road, their careless decision making may still be the only reason a crash happens. A drunk driver may not get in a car meaning to hit a pedestrian, but if they had gotten a ride home with a sober friend, they could have avoided injuring another person entirely. Similarly, aggressive driving, following too closely, making lane changes without looking, and speeding are all decisions that people make to behave in an unsafe manner. We shouldn’t allow people to avoid responsibility for these harmful decisions by calling the resulting crash an “accident.”