Recent Streetsblog USA posts about “Accidents”

Driver Who Killed Cyclist Sues the Dead Teen’s Parents

By Angie Schmitt | Apr 28, 2014 | 78 Comments

In a case the Ottawa Citizen called “astonishing evidence of the raw appeal of… victimhood,” a woman who struck and killed a teenage boy riding his bike outside of Toronto is suing the boy’s family for $1.35 million. The driver, Sharlene Simon, is seeking compensation for the “great pain and suffering” she has sustained since killing […]

Map: Where Buffalo Drivers Smash Into Buildings (Hint: Everywhere)

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 10, 2014 | 17 Comments

Cynthia Van Ness, a librarian and host of BuffaloResearch.com, put together the above map, showing the nearly 150 sites where drivers crashed into buildings in the Buffalo region and made the news since 2006. The map includes links to the media coverage of the incidents, and Van Ness points out how reporters and editors tend […]

Is This Anti-Speeding PSA Too Real for America?

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 7, 2014 | 25 Comments

Wow. This public safety spot from New Zealand really brings home how decisions we casually make while driving can have grave consequences. The PSA questions the whole idea that traffic violence is somehow unavoidable, the result of fate more than human error. In the United States the notion that traffic collisions are nothing but tragic […]

It’s Time for the AP to Nix the Term “Accident” to Describe Car Collisions

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 11, 2013 | 27 Comments

Earlier this year, the NYPD adopted a policy to stop using the term “accident” to describe traffic collisions. The San Francisco police department made similar changes a few months later. The problem with the term “accident,” of course, is that it implies no one was at fault — that traffic injuries and deaths are just random, […]

Feds Withhold Fatal-Accident Info from Public

By Sarah Goodyear | Mar 8, 2007 | 5 Comments

An article in the LA Times (reg required) details how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has systematically withheld information on fatal accidents from the public, even going so far as to deny Freedom of Information Act requests from researchers. R.A. Whitworth, whose Maryland-based company conducts highway safety research for attorneys, insurance companies and even […]