Originally Posted by livedarklions

Are you writing a parody? People didn't "joyfully walk the urban landscape" pre-automobile because the streets were so full of horse and human crap and roads were so poorly controlled that crossing them was always a high risk. People were killed by horses and carts and later street cars and trains in large numbers. Leave the history out of it because you obviously have no clue there. A 19th century city was a far more dangerous place than a 21st century city.

Where this ridiculous argument falls apart and turns into the ineffective and absurd brow-beating so beautifully exhibited above is that you cannot give a single plausible reason why using the "better" words will do a single thing to change people's minds. "Crash, collision or incident" do not convey anything about responsibility that "accident" does not. Changing the terms for completely bogus reasons about word usage is so obviously an empty virtue-signalling gesture that ranting as you do here just makes the advocate look silly.

If you really want to adopt a term that conveys what's going on here, I'm all in. You want to adopt something evocative of the real tragedy? Pick a really better term. How about "person/people hit by car/truck" or "vehicular killing and maiming"? If that's too long, how about "vehicular slaughter"?

" Crash" and "collision" don't even refer to people at all, and cover everything from a minor fender bender to ramming a full school bus into a gas truck. "Incident" is even worse than "accident" as it doesn't even convey any sense of misadventure. "Incidental" implies insignificance.