Auto accident versus collision; I was wrong

The law is entirely semantics. Perhaps ordinary people (who don't watch
fictional lawyers on tv and become legal experts like me) don't
appreciate this, but a state legislature that employs professionals who
are specifically experts in legal language and statutory construction
fail to grasp the consequence of a semantic change?

In this video, Steve Lehto discusses the unintended consequence of
substituting "collision" for "accident" when Hawaii amended a law. Years
ago, I was one of those people who stopped using the word "accident",
influenced by others who wanted newspaper reporters and others in the
media to stop reporting such incidents as "accidents" because the reader
or listener would assume that the incident was unavoidable.

But that's not what "accident" means. Neither in dictionary definitions
nor statutory language has it meant "unavoidable" in which there is no
fault to find. Instead, it means that the party at fault for the
incident had not committed an intentional act.

"Accident", therefore, means "without intent" not "without fault".

To the uninformed reader or listener, as "crash" or "collision" is just
a factual statement without finding of fault and without proving intent,
"unavoidable" isn't incorrectly assumed.

Lehto went off on a bit of an incorrect tangent about why people were
pushing for the word "accident" not to be used.

There are unintended consequences of changing statutory language because
"feelings". Here's an example:

In Honolulu, Five-Oh was chasing another motorist without lights and
sirens. The driver of the vehicle being chased flipped the vehicle.
People inside the vehicle were seriously injured.

The cop driving was charged with a felony based on colliding with the
vehicle being chased, because language in the statute had been changed
from "accident" to "collision". Now, the state may have been able to
prove that the cop was at fault for causing an accident because of the
unsafe manner of pursuit and that conduct during pursuit was criminally
negligent or reckless. But was the cop at fault for causing a collision?

If in fact the vehicles had not collided, then the change in statutory
language prevents charges in which an accident occurred that was not the
result of a collision.

Oops.

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATTJtvXbeU