John Hearns wrote:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 15:31:22 +0000, Trevor Barton wrote:



Reading the article closely, there were minor injuries to the policemen.

The article almost makes it sound like "this cyclist ran into a stationary
police car. The cyclist was killed, and the poor policeman are all shaken
up by the incident"

Reading the article closely, it says nothing about the circumstances of
the incident.


I realise that. Let me make try to make this clearer - the words in the
article are slanted in a certain way. It does use the word "accident"
(twice) with no justification if you follow your logic (*). The mental
image they put in my mind is the one I've described.

I'm no good at doing this, but let's say the article said:
"A police car collided with a cyclist on the Rotherham Road.
The cyclist was killed, but the officers escaped with minor injuries"

Sorry, I really don't want to pick a fight with you,
especially over such a tragic story.


(*) the article pre-judges that this was an "accident".

Only if the reporter has the same amount of information as you or I.
I'm supposing that isn't the case.

However, common usage of the word accident doesn't imply guilt on any
party, and although you might justifiably argue that most road accidents
are not accidents, your posting seemed to assume that the car drivers
were responsible in your opinion. This is both unfair and unjustified
given the information you have.

There is a spectrum of culpability in any incident, ranging from "one
party being completely in the wrong and the other being unable to do
anything about it" (eg a car driving off a motorway onto a trainline),
to "could have been avoided if the victim was more experienced/paying
more attention" (eg a car coming out of give way sign and running into a
car that has priority), to completely shared responsibility (umm, two
cars coming out of opposing give way signs at the same time??). Most
incidents are not black and white. It's certainly not right to assume
that the coppers were in the wrong based on the information in the
article. They almost certainly share some of the the responsibility,
but you have no way of knowing how much. It does not neccessarily
follow that because they were in the car they are primarily responsible
for what happenned, as you seemed to imply.

But, yes, it's not really a story to pick a fight over.

--
Trevor Barton