Bullets don't shoot people. So why do cars 'kill' cyclists?

crooked-v

It's the same kind of weasel journalism as "officer-involved shootings".

pmdulaney

The implied analogy is limited. Anti-gun folks argue that since so many people die as a result of handguns, they should be banned. But despite the fact that in car/bicycle crashes the cyclist inevitably gets the worst of it, no one is seriously calling for the elimination of automobiles.

ineedasername

The premise is false. Headlines or descriptions of events like *"Three innocent bystanders were hit when a spray of bullets burst through the door, killing 1 and injuring the other 2". So... Bullet anthropomorphizing is also a thing.

hamdingers

Police and news media reflexively defend drivers to the point where the language they use is laughable if you aren't of that mindset. Nonsense phrases like "intentional accident" and similar variations are common. Accident is a nice euphemism for when kids pee their pants, don't use it for when adults crash their cars. The gun community has excised "accidental discharge" from their vocabulary and replaced it with the more accurate "negligent discharge," lets do the same for drivers.

bmandale

A lot of these style of reframings seem to completely lack a theory behind them, as if reframing things will magically solve a problem. In this case, further vilifying or antagonizing drivers will do absolutely nothing to increase road safety. How would it? These memes won't reach the majority of drivers. Those it does, rather than feeling mollified, will feel accused, and hence will be more likely to drive recklessly around cyclists. A reframing that would have the power to lower collisions between cars and bikes would be to blame the road design, or even the car design. These are things that can be easily changed for a large number of people if enough political will exists.

happytoexplain

This is a really enormous stretch.