An online campaign seeks 20,000 individual pledges to self-edit.
In our society, language can be everything. — Mark Rosekind, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Rosekind
Believing in the power of language to help save lives, the traffic safety czar and others are urging Americans to shift from “accident” to “crash” when describing car accidents caused by human error, which is many of them. If with a single noun we can communicate more clearly the responsibility of drivers for thousands of injuries and deaths, the argument goes, we can hope to change their behavior behind the wheel. Adds Rosekind, quoted in The New York Times: “When you use the word ‘accident,’ it’s like, ‘God made it happen.’ ”
The logic sounds sensible. . . . But . . .
