We've had various discussions of the use of expressions such as "... was in collision with ..." and I was surprised by the directness of the language used at such an early stage in the inquiries here:
A dog walker and her pet have been killed along with a motorcyclist who ploughed into them in Dorset.
The crash happened near Chafey's roundabout in Weymouth on Saturday when the bike hit the 63-year-old woman and her dog.
The air ambulance attended but all three died at the scene.
Police said 23-year-old biker had been riding his bronze-coloured Honda from Westwey Road junction towards Chafeys Roundabout shortly after 17:00 BST. (My emphasis.)
It's just Red Top journalism. Something similar happened on a BBC report about the Oscar Pistorius trial when they described how the accused "threw up" in court. What's wrong with "vomited"?
“Ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel. But ride.” ~ Eddy Merckx It's a rich man whos children run to him when his pockets are empty.
There is a reason for the use of this language, which I suspect is why 3rd crank posted it. The reporting has to be sure it does not prejudice any possible prosecution. Hence the concept of a "collision" between a child and a car. To infer the car hit the child is to possibly prejudge the case as it suggests the child was innocent of any blame. As we don't have strict liability in this country the press have to be careful what they say. I remember being in collision with a car when on my trike as a nipper. The driver was not at fault as he was inside his house drinking a cup of tea at the time I ran into his parked car!
BeeKeeper wrote:There is a reason for the use of this language, which I suspect is why 3rd crank posted it. The reporting has to be sure it does not prejudice any possible prosecution. Hence the concept of a "collision" between a child and a car. To infer the car hit the child is to possibly prejudge the case as it suggests the child was innocent of any blame. As we don't have strict liability in this country the press have to be careful what they say. I remember being in collision with a car when on my trike as a nipper. The driver was not at fault as he was inside his house drinking a cup of tea at the time I ran into his parked car!
There's a readily available solution, both legally neutral and free of language abuse, which avoids that dilemma. Simply don't use any of the parties to the incident as the subject of a verb. So instead of saying 'x was in collision with y', or 'x collided with y', you say 'there was a collision between x and y'. Police and press seem rarely if ever to use that form of words, for reasons hard to understand.
BeeKeeper wrote:There is a reason for the use of this language, which I suspect is why 3rd crank posted it. The reporting has to be sure it does not prejudice any possible prosecution. Hence the concept of a "collision" between a child and a car. To infer the car hit the child is to possibly prejudge the case as it suggests the child was innocent of any blame. As we don't have strict liability in this country the press have to be careful what they say. I remember being in collision with a car when on my trike as a nipper. The driver was not at fault as he was inside his house drinking a cup of tea at the time I ran into his parked car!
Yes but this language isn't neutral. There is a difference between your example "a collision between" and "collided with". Obviously the examples with the child and pedestrian are absurd but using less prejudicial language becomes more important in other cases. When we read " a cyclist [active] collided with a car [passive]" we infer that the cyclist has hit the car rather than the other way around. They should not use any language which implies something which is not known.
Edit Chris made this point whilst I was typing this post
BeeKeeper wrote:There is a reason for the use of this language, which I suspect is why 3rd crank posted it. The reporting has to be sure it does not prejudice any possible prosecution. Hence the concept of a "collision" between a child and a car. To infer the car hit the child is to possibly prejudge the case as it suggests the child was innocent of any blame. As we don't have strict liability in this country the press have to be careful what they say. I remember being in collision with a car when on my trike as a nipper. The driver was not at fault as he was inside his house drinking a cup of tea at the time I ran into his parked car!
There's a readily available solution, both legally neutral and free of language abuse, which avoids that dilemma. Simply don't use any of the parties to the incident as the subject of a verb. So instead of saying 'x was in collision with y', or 'x collided with y', you say 'there was a collision between x and y'. Police and press seem rarely if ever to use that form of words, for reasons hard to understand.
Because it takes a modicum of English grammar?
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way.No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse. There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
BeeKeeper wrote:There is a reason for the use of this language, which I suspect is why 3rd crank posted it. The reporting has to be sure it does not prejudice any possible prosecution. Hence the concept of a "collision" between a child and a car. To infer the car hit the child is to possibly prejudge the case as it suggests the child was innocent of any blame. As we don't have strict liability in this country the press have to be careful what they say. I remember being in collision with a car when on my trike as a nipper. The driver was not at fault as he was inside his house drinking a cup of tea at the time I ran into his parked car!
That is simply not the case - you can still report that X was run over by a bus (ie the straight facts of a case) without implying any criminiality on the part of the bus driver. The press are quite happy to post accounts of people being robbed, assualted, raped and so on in straight forward language rather than convoluted attempts to portray neutrality. Imagine this as a red-top headile "Miss Smith aged 13 is in hospital having collided with a basebal bat, during a financial transaction with Mr Jones aged 34."
The "in collision with" terminology actually represents progress from the previous practice which was to describe all crashes as "accidents".