Media - wording

[iiisecondcreep]

This is something that gets my goat.

Every time there is a news article on a road traffic accident involving one or more vehicles of the 4 wheeled variety the wording 99.9999% of the time seems to read something like say 'a person was left seriously injured when'... "the vehicle left the road", "the vehicle struck a tree", "the vehicle struck another vehicle", the vehicle struck a person", "the vehicle overturned" etc etc etc.

"the vehicle" does not have a mind of its own, as this wording often seems to suggest.

I do quite a lot of miles in my car and from what I see on a daily basis I'm surprised we're not reading "the vehicle was 2 inches from the arse of the vehicle in front at 70mph" etc

Recently I read an article regarding a young motorbike rider who had ended up in hospital after ending up in a field with his bike.

The wording?

Along the lines of "the young motorbike rider was left injured when he lost control of his motorbike and ended up in a field"

So apparently only 4 or more wheeled vehicles are capable of intentionally and maliciously injuring people, when its a 2 wheeled vehicle suddenly its the drivers own fault.

(note, I am not saying the biker was not at fault my issue is when its a car/whatever involved its almost never the driver thats at fault, I am also not saying that there are never times when there are genuine accidents)

[Stu]

Talking about today's car and bus up your way?

The media aren't allowed to proportion blame hence the vehicle did whatever

[iiisecondcreep]

Talking about today's car and bus up your way?

The media aren't allowed to proportion blame hence the vehicle did whatever

 

Fair do's... but surely then the incident with the young biker should have read 'ended up in hospital when his bike left the road' rather than 'ended up in hospital because he lost control of his bike and ended up in a field'.

Nah nothing specific, there is a new one every day. The car and the bus was... yesterday? I'm sure there'll have been another today. There seems to be every other day.

Maybe I'm just noticing it more... maybe they're just getting more coverage on the news... but the amount of RTAs being reported seemed higher than ever :/

I should probably just top reading the news, its depressing!

[JRH]

(I am also not saying that there are never times when there are genuine accidents)

 

Apparently there are no genuine accidents these days. There must always be someone at fault / to blame.

[Throttled]

That terminology sounds like what the police use, the media get much of their info from police press releases and they have lapsed into the police speak.

[Stu]

(I am also not saying that there are never times when there are genuine accidents)

 

Apparently there are no genuine accidents these days. There must always be someone at fault / to blame.

 

And that is true!

At the end of the day if you control the vehicle properly then you won't crash likewise with others if they control their vehicle properly they won't crash in to you

Also if people look properly they will see the hazards and drive accordingly!

[onesea]

The one that grates me when ever a motorbike is involved...

"The police are looking for witnesses to the crash and any with information about how it was being ridden before the crash".

How often do you hear that for cars? More to the point 50% of the cars will say I am riding to fast as I have filtered passed them or overtaken them at safe and appropriate moments so I would be going to quick...

[TC1474]

Taking it one step further, and what really grinds my goat as a crash investigator is how many people try and second guess the cause of the crash even though the information is sketchy at best. And I include people on this forum who are just as guilty and make assumptions without knowing all the facts.

The press cannot and will not give out all the information because they don't know, or at best they will give out the information that makes it more dramatic, and in court cases, they certainly never give all the information, but everyone has an opinon on what the cause of the crash is, the legal standing, what the penalty should be, and yet they have not got a clue.

I deal with accidents on a daily basis, I get to see all the documentary and photographic evidence (if there is anything) and in most cases, I have to look at, read through and study all the evidence as well as interview people before I can come to any conclusions as to causation or liablity.

But how many people here make an assumption or come to a conclusion based on a badly written newspaper article? Quite a fewe here thats for sure.

So the principal is the same as the comment made by the OP.

One one of the reasons why the Police often look for information on how a bile is being ridden is because many witnesses tend to be hostile simply because they do not ride and have no idea of how a bike rides. I have had crashes where the witnesses have said something along the lines of "The bike was travelling at least 60MPH" when the reality was that it was actually doing no more than about 30.

Or they say the bile was overtaking illegaly when in fact it was filtering perfectly legaly. It is often a case of getting the evidence into perspective and not just taking (if possible) one hostile witnesses view and getting a proper balance.

Difficult to explain unless you actually do the job and understand how the system works.

[Guest]

I can't stand the way that we get shown what's coming up in this episode. Channel 5 seems the worst for this. I don't want to know what's coming as that is why I am watching the program FFS. Also why do we need a 30 secs recap every f***ing time we have an advert. I am perfectly capable of remembering what's just happened. Plus ITV should not be allowed show sports. f***ing adverts ruin the atmosphere. The rugby world cup was a case in point. Here are the national anthems then the Haka and then they go to a commercial break just to spoil the build up.