Goshen, IN

In Our Opinion
Implications from language specificity

Among journalistic principles are the directives that specificity is important and connotation can be problematic. Nowhere is this more consequential than in the reporting of police news.
Consider the ubiquitous fender-bender mishap. The scrapes or pains may be minor, but these crashes serve to demonstrate the enormous potential for significant injury or even death as well as major property damage.
However, sometimes writers call these collisions “accidents,” which is a problem for Gary Direnfeld, executive director of the “I Promise Program,” a teen safe driving initiative.
“It is important to move away from the use of the term ‘accidents’ as this implies that the crashes are a matter of fate when, more often than not, this is hardly the case,” says Direnfeld.
He notes there are several contributors to teen driver car crashes, including excessive speed, risk-taking behavior, multiple teen passengers and driving after midnight. “As soon as parents learn they can control many of these factors, their teens will have a better chance of returning home safely each night,” Direnfeld says.
He is right, although he may be overreaching just a little bit in his efforts. Parents won’t automatically seek to discipline children with bad driving habits just because they know that accidents are really crashes.
Yet it doesn’t hurt to stress the nature of vehicular collisions. There is some merit to changing our daily usage of language to ensure a specific characterization of activities.
In time, there may be social and behavioral implications if we are consistent in our language usage and refer to the “collisions” or “crashes” of vehicles that are caused by human error.

Contact:

Gary Direnfeld, MSW, Executive Director
I Promise Program Inc.
20 Suter Crescent,
Dundas, Ontario, Canada
L9H 6R5

(905) 628-4847
gary123@sympatico.ca
www.ipromiseprogram.com