To echo Dave Alpert’s concern I think it’s deplorable that this is the standard way of describing what happens when illegal driving kills people:
Four people ranging in age from 19 to 21 were killed early yesterday in Culpeper County, Va., when their car collided with a vehicle that was going the wrong way, Virginia State Police said.
Nobody would ever write “four people ranging in age from 19 to 21 were killed early yesterday in Culpepper County, Va., when their heads collided with bullets that were flying in the wrong direction.
Cars and trucks are, obviously, useful ways of getting around and I expect that people will continue to use them regularly for a long time to come. But equally obviously, fast-moving heavy metal objects are extremely dangerous. The people piloting them have a responsible to be careful with what they’re doing. And people who aren’t careful—especially those people whose carelessly leads to deaths and serious injuries—deserve to be subjected to strong implicit and explicit moral criticism. The common rhetoric of “accidents” the use of the passive voice serve to obscure what’s happening and where the responsibility lies.
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