Re: Auto accident versus collision; I was wrong

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Mar 19, 2025 1:15:23 PM PDT, moviePig <nobody@nowhere.com>:

On 3/19/2025 3:43 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

Mar 19, 2025 10:30:16 AM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com>:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

. . .

When I was driving school buses, I found that my employers never used
the word "accident". If someone hit something while driving their bus,
even if it was the merest scratch, it was never an accident: it was
*always* a collision. (I'm sure this would have been true if a person
were hit, although I don't recall anyone ever hitting a person while I
worked there.) I feel sure this was their way of making us take
responsibility for what had happened. We didn't get to say anything that
implied that whatever happened couldn't be helped in some way. Even if
we weren't at fault, I think they expected that we could have done
something to prevent or minimize the event. Drivers were always taken
off the road for a day or two and made to have a retraining session with
another driver after a collision.

Your employer wasn't wrong: there was a collision.

I was a school bus driver too. We were told we would be blamed for a
rear end collision (the vehicle behind colliding with the rear of the
school bus) regardless of what the law said, because they always wanted
us to leave adequate distance behind the vehicle ahead of the bus.

How do you control how much distance there is behind you from other
traffic?

Use your accelerator.

And if there's traffic in front of you also?

Oh dear gawd

A bus's interior mirror isn't comparable to the rear view mirror of an
automobile. The driver may see passengers inside the bus with it, only.

THERE IS NO REAR VIEW MIRROR.

It cannot be seen in the side-view mirrors either.

It was an impossible-to-follow instruction, but what management was
getting at was AVOIDING being in a situation in which a chain-reaction
collision could occur. The bus driver was responsible for not following
too closely. If he had to brake, then it wouldn't be as sudden a braking
in reaction to his leader following too closely,

It means the opposite of what moviePig said.