• @apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    A pediatric doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was killed while riding her bike in Center City on Wednesday night.

    The use of passive voice in the first sentence does a lot of work shifting blame away from the driver and the car centric systems in an “objective” effort.

    How about:

    Cyclist Barbara Friedes died when the driver of a car hit her in the bike lane on Wednesday night.

    • @Bademantel@feddit.de
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      304 months ago

      Very interesting, thank you. I was wondering if that also happens in other countries. It is sadly the norm in Germany when reporting car accidents.

        • @sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          94 months ago

          Somebody told me that at her hospital they don’t say “accident” since it’s always preventable. They say “collision”

            • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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              64 months ago

              The army shifted to this verbiage as well from “accidental discharge” to “negligent discharge” when at the clearing barrels or while on patrol.

              Also increased the punishment, and it helped quite a bit in reducing the knuckleheads. No longer a “whoops! Mah bad”

          • @bluewing@lemm.ee
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            34 months ago

            As an old and retired medic, I’ve done my share of “accidents”. There wasn’t a single time that I stepped out of my amp-a-lamps and surveyed a scene that I couldn’t see the point where someone(s) got stupid. And then things went sidways after that. There is lots of stupid in this world.

            There are no accidents. Just people doing stupid things.

      • @apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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        54 months ago

        Used to subversively reinforce power or the status quo:

        “Police killed/murdered by man.” “Man was killed in police raid.”

        “Israeli killed/murdered by Palestinians.” “Palestians were killed in airstrike on hospital targeting Hamas.”

      • @Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 months ago

        I suspect the tone is used so they aren’t sued for stuff. I understand it but I disagree on their usage of it.

      • @apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        What that she died? Absolutely not. There is no accusation or assignment of guilt. It tells what happened, assignment comes later. A driver did hit her and kill her, for which there can be many reasons it occurred.

    • fmstrat
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      4 months ago

      While I agree with the car centric aspect of this, you should read the article. The top bullets are more specific, and the driver may have had a medical incident.

      • @limelight79@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        The bullets don’t say that now, but it’s possible they changed the article (they should indicate the changes made, but I don’t see any notes, so who knows). Currently the bullets say:

        • Barbara Friedes, a 30-year-old pediatric doctor, was killed on Wednesday when she was hit by a car while riding a bike near Rittenhouse Square.

        • Friedes was recently named a chief resident at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

        • At the time of the deadly crash, police say, Friedes was wearing a helmet and was riding in a protected bike lane. The driver of the vehicle that struck Friedes has not yet been charged.

        There’s a comment in the article that says they don’t know if there was a medical issue:

        Police said they do not know at this time if the driver had a medical condition or was intoxicated at the time of the crash.

        My frustration here is that “medical issue” is ALWAYS the conclusion people jump to when a driver hits a cyclist, as if there’s no possible way a driver could do anything wrong - despite all evidence to the contrary. “Medical issue” almost never turns out to be the actual reason. It’s almost always drunk, distracted, just hates cyclists so much that they attack them, or some combination of the three. (There are also instances of cyclists being at fault, for example pulling out in front of a car. Those are rare, too, but they do happen.)

        I recognize that a sudden, previously unknown medical condition could strike a driver, causing the driver to lose control and inflict damage and injuries. But it’s an extremely rare event.

      • @apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Thanks, I did. Then I wrote the comment, copied the quote directly from the article. It is the first sentence of the article. I also said the cyclist died, made no indication that the person was “murdered” or anything.