On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Stuart Jansen<sjan...@buscaluz.org> wrote: > So what was the point of your original comment? Apparently it was > neither politics nor law.
No, but it is equally off topic. > No one is going to disagree that the accident might have been avoidable. > Does using a different word change the situation? Does it somehow make > you feel better? Does it do anything other than poor salt in wounds I'm > sure are already quite raw? The benefit comes from hopefully preventing other people from doing the same thing in the future. If we talk about this as an accident, we'll think about it as one. On the other hand, if we talk about it as a negligent death, then we will hopefully think harder about our own behavior and operation of a motor vehicle, and be more careful next time we back out of our driveways. This is the same reason that the military has started using the term "negligent discharge" when talking about a soldier firing their weapon when they didn't intend to. The aunt, of course, should be dealt with as delicately as possible. I doubt there is anything we could say to or about her that is worse than what she has already said to herself. > Besides, in what universe does the word accident mean "unavoidable"? > Accidents are unintended, not unavoidable. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=accident - see #2. A lot of people use the word "accident" to mean "there was nothing I could have done to prevent it." -Dan /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
