Re: Auto accident versus collision; I was wrong

On 2025-03-19 6:43 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Mar 19, 2025 at 3:13:27 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
wrote:
 

On 2025-03-19 5:50 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

  On Mar 19, 2025 at 2:44:36 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
  wrote:
 

  On 2025-03-19 3:42 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

    On Mar 19, 2025 at 10:03:23 AM PDT, "Rhino"
<no_offline_contact@example.com>
    wrote:
   

    On 2025-03-19 11:45 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

      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.

>
    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.

        Even if a meteor fell out of the sky and hit the bus? You still have to go
    through retraining?
        I absolutely hate bureaucratic nonsense like that.
   

  My employers were reasonably sensible people for the most part so I like
  to think that they wouldn't force a retraining session on a driver if
  something like a meteor strike happened.
>
  Then again, my brother - who worked for the same company but drove a
  minivan instead of a bus - had a flat once. It took many hours for the
  repair service to come and change out the tire and then he was told he
  needed a retraining session. I asked why, given the circumstances, and
  he said he didn't really understand it either. But I don't think he ever
  actually *did* the retraining session. It was one of the very last days
  of the school year so it may simply have been lost in the shuffle. Or
  maybe they realized how silly it was to do a retraining session for that
  circumstance.
>
  And that reminds me that I had a flat tire myself once. I ran over a
  piece of something on the road just before I got to the school and
  didn't notice anything off but after I'd let the kids off and was doing
  my child-check (to make sure no one was still on the bus), a teacher
  crossed the laneway in from of my parked bus and noticed a hissing from
  the left front tire. He brought that to my attention and I realized that
  I'd driven over something. Having remembered how long it took someone to
  come for my brother's flat and being in dire need of a washroom, I
  decided to drive the bus back to our office - the repair bays are in the
  same building - because drivers were not permitted to use the school
  washrooms. I took slower secondary roads rather than the expressway -
  and got back without incident. However, I was surprised to discover that
  the damaged tire was not even properly seated on the rim. The bus hadn't
  ridden oddly with the front left side sagging as I would have thought
  given the circumstances. I told the mechanics that I probably shouldn't
  have moved once I knew about the flat and they agreed but I didn't get
  into any trouble let alone forced to take a retraining session.
>

    When I was a super-secret government agent, the absolute worst thing that
    could happen was for you to have a car collision. You could walk down the
    street and shoot someone at random and have less paperwork and
bureaucratic
    hoops to jump through than there was with a minor fender-bender.
        In the aftermath of 9-11, I was assigned as the detail leader for Lauren
  Bush
    (George W's niece) who was a high school student at the time. It was a
very
    loose detail and we didn't go into the school with her. We sat out in the
    parking lot in a car, parked near hers and would pick her up when she left
    school each afternoon. She had a panic button that she could push if
  anything
    happened inside the school that would bring us running in.
        So over the course of several months, as I was sitting in my parked car, I
  was
    backed into by high school kids not one, not two, but three different
times.
    Each bump came with reams of paperwork and repair estimates (even when no
    repairs were necessary) and as a bonus on my third incident, I was told I
  had
    take a mandatory driver's education safety course.
        Even though my car was parked in each instance and the engine wasn't even
    running. They told me if I'd been standing nearby and the car was
empty, it
    wouldn't have counted, but because I was inside the car each time when it
    happened, then according to the bureaucratic rules, I was presumed to need
    re-education.
        Whoever thought forcing people who carry loaded firearms to deal with such
    inscrutable and intractable bureaucracy wasn't thinking very clearly.

   

  LOL!
>
  I'm gonna guess that the paperwork was to cover their asses in case you,
  or anyone else in the car, developed an injury after the fact - "I
  thought it was just a bit of whiplash but the doctor says I've got a
  serious injury" - and limit the government's liability.
>
  I hear you though: the bureaucracy seems to be able to conjure up
  mountains of paperwork for circumstances that don't seem to require it.

    All it did was teach me the lesson: if it happens again, say you were out
  stretching your legs and not in the car, regardless of whether it was true
or
  not.
   

That might work once but I suspect if that started being a regular thing
among agents, the bureaucrats would insist that you couldn't leave the
car without prior permission from a supervisor or dispatcher (if you
have dispatchers). I'm not even joking.
>
Last year, I had to have a gastroscopy at a local hospital. I was having
a bit of trouble with things "going down the wrong way" so they stuck a
tube down my throat to look around, then to make a bit more room for
food, pills, whatever to go down smoothly. They sedated me first. The
whole thing apparently only took about 5 minutes and I felt absolutely
fine when I woke up but the rules of this procedure are that I am
absolutely forbidden to drive myself home, take the bus home, or even
take a cab. The ONLY way they would do the procedure was for me to have
a friend pick me up afterwards and drive me home. Luckily, I have
friends that are retired who could drive me and someone was available
for when my procedure was scheduled but my friend lives out of town,
maybe half an hour from the hospital. It really irked me that this was
the only way to get the procedure. I was absolutely fully capable of
walking to the bus stop and getting home from there. I asked the doctor
and he said it was "hospital policy"; I have no doubt that policy was
developed when their lawyers said it reduced liability.
>
It would make sense to have a policy like that if I was woozy after the
procedure but I was 100% fine. But if I hadn't agreed to that, they
would have cancelled the procedure. Bloody bureaucrats!!!

 So you tell them your friend is picking you up, they do the procedure, then
you walk out the doors and go to the bus stop. They can't retroactively cancel
the procedure.
 

It's not that easy: they insist on having the friend's name and number on the form that you fill in and THEY call the friend, not me, when it's time. Of course, I could get the friend to pick me up and take me to the bus stop and get home that way but once he's actually at the hospital, it's more of a waste of time for him to drive all that way just to take me to the bus stop - which is literally beside the main entrance to the hospital - then go back to his house.
I thought I could just sign a release to absolve the hospital/doctor of responsibility but they wouldn't do THAT either: the doctor's office manager said the only option would be to do the procedure without sedation but I think she just said that to pressure me to comply with their rules because the form itself said failure to arrange a driver would cause the procedure to be cancelled altogether so I'm assuming that's the *real* policy.
These damned bureaucrats always seem to think of a way to corner you to make you do it their way, no ifs, ands or buts.
--
Rhino