Itʻs 8:30 on a Tuesday morning and you hear a ping on your phone. “Honolulu Police Department newest collision report,” it reads. Opening it you see a few sentences about a car accident killing one in downtown Honolulu. ʻWow, bet the traffic will be bad getting to work,ʻ you think to yourself as you begin rushing out the door. Pulling out of the driveway – already forgetting about the traffic report – you get a call from HPD. They found you as an emergency contact in your best friend’s phone, told you that your friend was in an “accident” and didnʻt survive. A rush of guilt fills your body as you remember your first thought of that report – announcing the death of your best friend – was traffic. You later find out that it was no accident and that a drunk driver ran them over while they were walking in a crosswalk.
How would you feel if the death of your best friend was reported in two sentences and stated to be an “accident” when there was someone very much at fault? One of many examples why we need to reframe the way we – journalists – report on traffic collisions.
Many assume technological improvements over the past decade have paved the way for safer roads—wrong. Since 2013, United States traffic fatalities have risen by 25% (according to National Transport Research Nonprofit).
The causes of this are various, but one stands more prominent—public perception.
Traffic collision reports – written by police or news outlets – often lack emotion or details surrounding the victims which creates a lens of insensitivity among the general public. Similar to what many call “passive social media scrolling.” One may scroll through posts about the war in Gaza, but because the posts are exceptionally frequent, many have become desensitized. Meaning, they look for a second and continue scrolling— with no resolving action.
The frequency along with no humanizing details in the reports, push viewers to see a collision as an inconvenience more than anything else. This societal “norm” of heedless insensitivity is detrimental to increasing traffic collisions—if no community action continues. By adding ages, genders, and other victim details journalists could add more magnitude to traffic deaths.
In the old days, car accidents were rare and received a lot more attention. The community saw these crashes for what they were—tragic deaths of their family, friends, and neighbors. Journalists must use innovative methods to provoke community action – through empathy – or we will continue to lose over 40,000 people to traffic deaths in the U.S. every year.
Using the word “accident” is also an issue for traffic reporting. The phrase “car accident” – versus car crash or collision – immediately tells the reader no one was at fault in this incident. This assumption is unfair to the victim and their loved ones because it relieves the offender of culpability.
Not using “counterfactuals” could also make traffic collision reporting more effective. Counterfactuals are phrases that pad traffic reports, such as, “They were not in the designated crosswalk.” Not only are they insensitive, but they assign immediate blame to the victim.
The other issue with counterfactuals is they take away from the problem at hand. By framing public perception, people can’t recognize the bigger picture and often no action is taken.
These small changes will help to halt increasing U.S. traffic collisions and ensure all journalists maintain ethical and moral standards within their reporting.
