Cycling Accident in East Anglia

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carlislemike
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Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by carlislemike »

Just read the report in the East Anglian Daily Times, relating to an accident in Framingham. Once again, " a cyclist was in a crash with a car!" Why can't they personalise it better? I have sent this email to the editor but fat lot of good it will do:- Strange how you can report a "Cyclist," in collision with a "car," when the first is a human being the second is a machine. Surely the correct terminology should be, "cyclist in collision with a motorist? Mind you they are both contentious as by their very phraseology, the insinuation is that the cyclist dir the colliding and not the other way round?? As any car, van or waggon is much bigger and heavier than any cyclist, the damage inflicted is going to be to the cyclist and not the vehicle or motorist!
thirdcrank
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by thirdcrank »

relating to an accident in
I'll be the first to mention that the word I've highlighted is widely condemned.
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mjr
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by mjr »

Send them a link to www.rc-rg.com and avoid making that mistake again.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
carlislemike
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by carlislemike »

The reply from the Editor is promising:-
“Thanks for your email, I think you've raised an interesting point.

We've recently been scrutinising how we report such incidents, and you've raised a new issue which I think this is even more food for thought. I'll make my editing team aware.

Best wishes, and thanks again for taking the time to contact me. Brad”

One step forward
Jdsk
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by Jdsk »

Well done.

Jonathan
awavey
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by awavey »

carlislemike wrote: 14 Jun 2021, 9:29pm The reply from the Editor is promising:-
“Thanks for your email, I think you've raised an interesting point.

We've recently been scrutinising how we report such incidents, and you've raised a new issue which I think this is even more food for thought. I'll make my editing team aware.

Best wishes, and thanks again for taking the time to contact me. Brad”

One step forward
they get that feedback from local cyclists nearly every time they print one of those articles. at least Ill know a new tack to take next time they do it referring to the fact the editor thinks its a jolly good idea they do change.

at least they didnt work out there was a sportive routing along that road yesterday as you can imagine the way the article would be worded then

but seriously, I hope the cyclist recovers from whatever injuries theyve had, thats the other down side of articles like this you get a report a cyclist was injured, taken to hospital, sometimes on roads you know well, sometimes not, and your mind of course thinks instantly, wow I wonder what happened, do I know them, could that have happened to me how badly were they injured but thats it, you never read or hear unless its like a 6 degrees of seperation thing via friends of friends, any follow up did the cyclist recover, was the driver at fault,did it get taken further.

and those are just the ones that get in the paper, Ive seen over the years a couple of cyclists being lifted off the road & transported away in ambulances after crashes, and nothing at all appeared in the papers about them.
Pete Owens
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by Pete Owens »

carlislemike wrote: 14 Jun 2021, 11:23am Strange how you can report a "Cyclist," in collision with a "car," when the first is a human being the second is a machine. Surely the correct terminology should be, "cyclist in collision with a motorist?
No it is just being accurate. The objects that collided were the car and the cyclist (and possibly the bicycle). It is extremely unlikely that anything collided with the motorist rather than the vehicle surrounding them.

A few years ago collisions were routinely described as "accidents" (ironically a mistake you made in your preamble). Quite rightly this was campaigned against as the wording implied - "just one of those things that happens that we can't do anything about" - when in the vast majority of cases this simply isn't the case. However, while crashes will normally involve human error on the part of one or both parties, at the time a reporter is reporting a crash they will not be aware of the circumstances leading up to it, who was doing what or who might be more blameworthy. All that they will know is that a collision has occurred, which vehicles were involved and where and when it happened.

While it is good that they now avoid the load term "accident" with its implication of blamelessness, they also need to take care to avoid jumping to conclusions and attributing blame to a particular party to a crash. This is why we end up with the rather ugly formulation "X was in collision with Y"..
Psamathe
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by Psamathe »

Maybe it highlights a way language can be interpreted. Did the cyclist collide with the car or did the car collide with the cyclist and do people interpret the two differently. We might say "the car collided with a tree" but don't tend to say "a tree collided with the car" - so does this inadvertently suggest a degree of cause/blame.

Ian
DaveReading
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by DaveReading »

Psamathe wrote: 15 Jun 2021, 10:28pmWe might say "the car collided with a tree" but don't tend to say "a tree collided with the car" - so does this inadvertently suggest a degree of cause/blame.
We say the former because a stationary object can't, by definition, collide with anything.
Psamathe
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by Psamathe »

DaveReading wrote: 15 Jun 2021, 10:48pm
Psamathe wrote: 15 Jun 2021, 10:28pmWe might say "the car collided with a tree" but don't tend to say "a tree collided with the car" - so does this inadvertently suggest a degree of cause/blame.
We say the former because a stationary object can't, by definition, collide with anything.
But is there a degree of "interpretation" in the order the two colliding objects are listed? If an asteroid collides with a planet, we think of the asteroid smashing into the planet not so much the planet smashing into the asteroid.

e.g. BBC report
Apophis asteroid will not hit Earth for 100 years, Nasa says
But why don't they ever talk about Earth hitting the asteroid?

Ian
Pete Owens
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by Pete Owens »

Because we live on the Earth and treat it as our frame of reference.
It is same reason we describe the Sun as rising in the east rather than the Earth rotating towards the east.
LollyKat
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by LollyKat »

Psamathe wrote: 15 Jun 2021, 10:28pm We might say "the car collided with a tree" but don't tend to say "a tree collided with the car"
On the BBC news website I once read that a pier had collided with a Calmac ferry. 😂
Unfortunately by the time I thought to take a screenshot it had been corrected.
awavey
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by awavey »

well just google "Rossington Crossing" and read all the headlines that come back for it this week, for those that dont know a car was driven at some speed through a metal fence next to Rossington Crossing when the barriers were down and collided with a passing train, fortunately no-one on the train was hurt, nor did it derail, and the car driver ran off.

but nearly all the news coverage of it starts "Train hits car..." and even when there isnt cctv footage available, which there now is, its patently obvious just from the description alone the thing crashing into the other thing is very much the car crashing into the train, not the other way around, and yet almost by default the headline is Train hits car
fastpedaller
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by fastpedaller »

carlislemike wrote: 14 Jun 2021, 9:29pm The reply from the Editor is promising:-
“Thanks for your email, I think you've raised an interesting point.

We've recently been scrutinising how we report such incidents, and you've raised a new issue which I think this is even more food for thought. I'll make my editing team aware.

Best wishes, and thanks again for taking the time to contact me. Brad”

One step forward
That's similar to the response I received 3 years ago - maybe the Editor is now someone different (former one sacked), or maybe they won't change at all?
awavey
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Re: Cycling Accident in East Anglia

Post by awavey »

fastpedaller wrote: 16 Jun 2021, 10:12pm That's similar to the response I received 3 years ago - maybe the Editor is now someone different (former one sacked), or maybe they won't change at all?
current editor has been there since 2017, former one simply retired, as I said up thread, its been raised more than once in the intervening years and with the recent road collision reporting guidelines that were published again

but here we are still waiting for them to be adopted, and as most of their collision articles are mere copy/paste jobs at best from the local polices tweets, I wont be holding my breath
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