A pediatric doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was killed while riding her bike in Center City on Wednesday night.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/deadly-3-car-crash-rittenhouse-philadelphia/3915690/
The original post on the Philadelphia subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/comments/1e5wkv0/insane_accident_on_18th_and_spruce/
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.
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.
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:
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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.
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Friedes was recently named a chief resident at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
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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.
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.
That’s a because there is no speculation that she was murdered. If the driver had a stroke, or some other medical incident, it would not be murder.
Works too, though more specific on assignment of judgment. Part of the point for me is to assign blame to the system in which we all must live.
We can make that point in the article, the headline is for drawing attention
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.
Somebody told me that at her hospital they don’t say “accident” since it’s always preventable. They say “collision”
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
@apfelwoiSchoppen But functionally, the victim didn’t die on her own, she died as the direct result of the driver hitting her. For the purpose of accurately portraying who took an action and who was acted upon, it should emphasize the driving, not the dying.
