BBC under fire for reporting three children 'hit by car'; Cav back on the track; Want to train as a bike mechanic?; Bid for a slice of signed G memorabilia; Ned Boulting joins cycle path news fan club; Philip Hindes retires + more on the live blog

FrankH wrote:

I'm struggling to understand the problem.

Yesterday's story was about a cyclist being kicked by a car driver. The driver got out of his car and kicked the cyclist.

Today's story is about people objecting to a report of a woman being hit by a car. We don't have ubiquitous autonomous vehicles yet so any rational person would assume that the car was being driven by somebody. Some people think it should have been reported as the woman being hit by a car driver but if you look at yesterday's story you'll see that that would imply the driver getting out of the car and hitting her,

"Woman Hit By Car" is a valid headline. We know the car was driven by somebody, any other way of reporting it risks confusing the reader. Or is that the point?

 
I think this is best described in terms of in- and out- group thinking. Most journalists and the general public will think fo themselves as "drivers" but not "cyclists". Cyclists are the out group, and therefore to be looked down upon, insulted, despised etc. 

We therefore see headlines for the general public like "pedestrian hit by cyclist" because the out group of cyclists are to be hated but "pedestrian hit by car" because people see themselves as drivers and do not want to imagine themselves as capable of making the same error. 
 

Note that pedestrian hit by cyclist contains all of the same semantic errors as hit by driver but it is commonly used with no apparent cognitive dissonance because of the out group effect. 
 

Personally I would prefer "pedestrian hit by car/bicycle driven/ridden by unknown driver/cyclist (or appropriate details such as man/woman etc)" to avoid confusion, attribute agency appropriately and ensure consistency as technology progresses. This is so that ultimately we can accurately report "pedestrian hit by car driving autonomously with no human on board " in 10 years time...

I heard this story on the radio and was pleasantly surprised by the positive coverage as well.  He does say he still uses the van for boilers and radiators but is obviously making a very positive change. 

Just to remind ourselves why we're here again: "those injured are a mother in her 20s and three children, the eldest of whom is seven."

Now I don't know for sure that they didn't all run out in front of the car from behind a bush. Nothing says that she didn't grab the children and dive under the car with them. Or that there was a driver in the car at all, or that the driver was conscious, or hadn't suddenly been stricken blind, or was not in the throes of a terrible personal crisis.

But I do know that every time this happens it seems to be reported as either:

"Car hits people. Can you believe it? So sad..."

Or on the rarer occasion:

"Monster kills our little angels!"

We won't reduce the occurrence of these incidents - which is what interests me - by absolving people ("unblemished record"...) of their responsibility. Nor highlighting a few villains ("drugs...3 times over the limit") and thereby putting the rest of us fallible drivers in the "good, just unlucky" camp.

Going beyond the reporting issue - we need both engineering to reduce the danger and better oversight of driving. There should be both a decent chance of detection and meaningful sanctions. Ideally on a "stop you for minor things before we have a major incident" basis. Regular "refreshers" for your licence wouldn't hurt either!

Maybe the government could consider looking at a different model when they get round to their review...

anke wrote:

Let me ask a question: 

Clearly, most of us would like less CARS on the roads

I'm not overly fussed either way - if anything, more cars = more congestion, which makes tends to make cycling safer.

anke wrote:

- and we'd all agree that CARS are dangerous. Yet, we do not seem to like the headline "car hits cyclist" - as it might blame the CAR rather than the HUMAN driving it.

Cars are not inherently dangerous, it is possible drive a car in an almost perfectly safe manner. This is part of the problem - we teach our child 'be careful of the cars' - and then act surprised when they grow up, start driving, and aren't careful of the children.

anke wrote:

Is this not the wrong way round? CARS encourage humans to act in aggressive and dangerous ways (and cause all sorts of problems) - but we seem to try to almost absolve the CARS here? Is this not a little similar to the NRA's (US) claim that "guns don't kill - people kill"...?

Cars don't encourage anyone to act in an aggressive or dangerous way. It is an attitude that unsafe driving is acceptable, an attitude that is perpetuated (or at least, not challenged), partly by language in articles such as this one on the BBC, which leads to unsafe driving continuing unabated.

I can't decide if your whole post is meant to tongue in cheek - so appologies if I have mis-understood.

So 6 months at Tesco makes 5000 extra to pay for 5 week course and sabes almost a year. Though surely the times you mention (days) would be for people already with some basic skills. Whatever, 18 months is astonishing

Flintshire Boy wrote:

Road.cc reaches new heights!

It's got a way to go yet - nobody liked my Latin joke the other day...

mdavidford wrote:

Flintshire Boy wrote:

Road.cc reaches new heights!

It's got a way to go yet - nobody liked my Latin joke the other day...

I might have liked it if I could spot it. Only 40 years since I was hilariously upgrading a textbook to "The Shorter Eating Primer" but I cannot see any Latin, joke or otherwise, there. Can you explain, using only first declension nouns and avoiding subjunctives?

But a joke's not funny once you explain it.

Latin is celebrated for its precision. I'm sure the ancient Roman media never confused chariot and charioteer when reporting crashes on the notorious Colosseum contraflow.

Using the context as outlined in the article, it should be 'shot WITH a gun' or 'stabbed WITH a knife', therefore 'run over by a motorist with their car' might be appropriate.

Sriracha wrote:

It needs some thought on how to phrase it. "Hit by a driver" might suggest the victim was in the passenger seat, etc. Perhaps we can offer constructive suggestions which describe the situation accurately without giving agency to the car? I'll start with "the victims were runover by a motorists".

We seem to have no problem stating that someone "was shot by a gunman", or "attacked by an assailant armed with a knife". 

"A driver has hit 3 children whilst driving a car/lorry/weapon-of-your-choice. "

The only reason that we find it sounds odd, is that we rarely hear of human involvement - that's probably what jars, and is also the reason to change the culture - I believe this has been trialled successfully in other countries

Mind you, the UK isn't Holland, as I'm frequently informed......

Sounds like you're serving up some poorly reconstituted English there. Let's have a proper meaty raw slice of "shot by a terrorist",  "driven into by a motorist" or "Crushed with a truck by Tescos employee"!

Nigel Garage wrote:

Captain Badger wrote:

We seem to have no problem stating that someone "was shot by a gunman", or "attacked by an assailant armed with a knife". 

"A driver has hit 3 children with whilst driving a car/lorry/weapon-of-your-choice. "

The only reason that we find it sounds odd, is that we rarely hear of human involvement - that's probably what jars, and is also the reason to change the culture - I believe this has been trialled successfully in other countries

Mind you, the UK isn't Holland......

Let me help you out, as Mungecuddles below has already given you a clue. The reason the phrase "shot by a gunman" works is because of the verb "shoot". Imagine if there was no verb "shoot" in the English language, and you had to reconstitute the phrase using the verb "hit". Would you say:

• someone was "hit by a gunman" or
• someone was "hit by a bullet"?

That's the issue here.

The issue however is that no news report ever would simply report 3 children were hit by bullets whilst walking to school.  There would be a discussion about who was carrying and firing the gun.  There are however many, many reports of people being hit hy a car with no discussion about the agency of the driver.  

Likewise as has been mentioned, pedestrians are always hit by cyclists not bicycles which are even less likely to be freely travelling at speed unassisted than cars- for example of the double standards see the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56320121

I don't think it needs to change that much. "the victims were hit by a motorist".

I do actually think Nigel has a point about the verb. Stab implies a knife or sharp instrument, shot implies a gun, whereas hit is more vague about the implement.

In a recent NMOTD the victim was hit by motorist, but not the car. The motorist got out of his car and and hit the cyclist, using his foot.

Which is why I suggested runover, since that implies a vehicle, whilst allowing for the agency to be placed with the driver. "Driven into" would also work, as per christonabike.

Sriracha wrote:

I do actually think Nigel has a point....

A quiet lie down until you feel normal should sort that

Sriracha wrote:

I do actually think Nigel has a point about the verb. Stab implies a knife or sharp instrument, shot implies a gun, whereas hit is more vague about the implement. In a recent NMOTD the victim was hit by motorist, but not the car. The motorist got out of his car and and hit the cyclist, using his foot. Which is why I suggested runover, since that implies a vehicle, whilst allowing for the agency to be placed with the driver. "Driven into" would also work, as per christonabike.

Thanks for the upgrade! I know the reasons for reluctance to change the language are both "legal concern" (often spurious but I'm no expert) and also "but that's the way we say it". However that's my point about ideology. Different publications / writers constantly phrase in particular ways, with more or less conscious intent. Words have ways with us and while simply changing the verbiage doesn't magically change the culture it is never "neutral". (You can use a "neutral tone" but you've done that for some reason.)

There's seldom just a single meaning for a word or phrase - just look in a dictionary.

Finally in stories we are always interested in agency e.g. whodunnit. Whether "they are legally responsible" or not. So not "people were hit by fast-moving fragments of metal" but "a bomb exploded and injured..." and we then invariably go on with whether this was dropped by a state actor, private enterprise ("suspected terrorist") or was just an old one someone had found down a hole. (Thanks to Nigel for his reductio ad absurdam on that).

I did wonder about this. I think someone argued that at the time of the attack he was in fact a pedestrian, from a legal point of view. (Although I do identify myself as a cyclist all the time 😊) the media will not identify somebody by their activity when they are not doing said activity.
To use Nige's analogy you won't see the headline 'man attacked by golfer whilst shopping in Tesco's'. He may well be a golfer, he may in fact be coming back from the golf course but it's extremely unlikely that has any bearing on the story.

'Driven into' perhaps?

BarryC666 wrote:

'Driven into' perhaps?

That's the clearest and easiest way to get the information across.

mdavidford wrote:

The weird thing is that the BBC tweet has the phrase in inverted commas - kind of implying that they know it's wrong, but have chosen to use it anyway, and at the same time are attempting to disavow that choice.

Perhaps they're trying to use the HIGNFY "allegedly" trick. They're probably wisely trying to avoid getting sued by the car, or marginalizing the 2t lump of iron community

The BBC were probably quoting a police or ambulance press release, perhaps that's where the problem lies.

In my brief stint in an ambulance control room many years ago traffic collisions were often referred to in short hand as 'car v ped', '4 veh rtc' or 'lorry v bike'. No mention of drivers or riders.

Ride On wrote:

The BBC were probably quoting a police or ambulance press release, perhaps that's where the problem lies.

It's in 'scare quotes', though, rather than double-quotes, which they'd normally use when quoting someone. And if they're quoting anyone, it appears to be... their own report, where the phrase appears unquoted.

Maybe not quoting a press release then.