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/
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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.
@apfelwoiSchoppen @ByteOnBikes Active voice would be, “A driver killed…”
They’re both active voice, they just have different verbs.
Yep, high school grammar 101. It isn’t that journalists don’t know this, it is how they are trained. Shift obvious blame away from parties for objectivity until a verdict or deference to the status quo.
“was killed” is passive.
Yes, we all agree on that fact. The discussion progressed to two different commentors’ active voice re-writes of the original sentence.
I would argue the first isn’t active voice
“died when the driver of a car hit her” seems passive to me. It’s more accurate, but still passive.
Both killed and died are active voice.
@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.
The discussion was active voice vs passive voice, not functionality of active voice vs functionality of differently-worded active voice. They’re both still active voice.
@PapaStevesy IMO active voice includes focusing the sentence on the subject that did the action, not the one that was acted upon but by all means let’s argue about grammatical definitions instead of the problem of motorists killing people and journalists normalizing it. 🙄
I mean, you’re literally the one who started the argument, being dismissive and condescending about it now just makes you look like a sore loser.
You’re the one doing that. Killed/died same difference, but I apologize for not using the same verb as the original quote for clarity.
“was killed” is passive.
Correct. I said killed.
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.
Even the word “accident” is part of that downplaying.
Somebody told me that at her hospital they don’t say “accident” since it’s always preventable. They say “collision”
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.
“Negligence” works too.
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”
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.”
Ärztin wurde von Auto erfasst und erlag ihren Verletzungen.
Upvote for a better headline and for n-browser translation
Definitely normal here in the US, too. Unfortunately.
I suspect the tone is used so they aren’t sued for stuff. I understand it but I disagree on their usage of it.
“Car driver kills doctor on bicycle”
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
I’m not critiquing the headline, I’m critiquing the first sentence.
Oh true. I was writing a headline lol
“Car driver kills children’s doctor on bicycle”
They would probably need a conviction before they could publish that.
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.
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.
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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.
Yes. That’s what I said.
Well, sort of. You edited your response to add a lot more context.
An hour before you commented.
Sounds like lemmy.world was behind on federation again. Booo
As a CAR PERSON if we’d just use all the money spent on roads to build public transport and walkable streets and we wouldnt need to pay a road tax for cars we could just use the money to build racetracks to enjoy fast cars. Every problem solved. Also if a few people just race sometimes and people dont commute by car every day, pollution form gas cars wouldnt be a problem.
As a fellow car person I endorse this idea fully. It would also be great to increase the knowledge and skill levels required for a license.
Also, make every car manual so people can’t use their phones while driving.
Edit: What if we turned old mall parking lots into racetracks?
I agree with this too, except that last bit. Making a car manual has a near zero affect on people’s use of phones when driving.
I say this as someone that used to use T9 to text when driving a manual car. Mind you that was 20 ish years ago when I was a stupid teenager, but there really was no difference between manual/automatic and using my phone when driving other than the added step of shifting.
To be fair, texting via t9 on physical buttons was way safer than fumbling around on a touch screen. I dit it blindly all the time.
You aren’t wrong lol.
Fellow former T9 texter here. I had one or two near misses as a teenager and cut that shit right out.
Also, make every car manual so people can’t use their phones while driving.
Can confirm that back when it was still legal, I was using my phone while driving a manual car
Can also confirm that even today it is still very easy to use the phone and drive manual, especially since the phone is addictive
“Hold on, have to shift…ok, so what’s up?”
As a car person in a city that used to have a race track, heck yeah! No more sideshows in neighborhoods too!
As a bicycle person, I’d love to rent the race track on off days or maintenance days.
On the other hand, how am I going to reach the race track if there is no high speed road to there?
Public transport? You mean those closed cabins where people go to spread their flu? No thank you.Well, road maintenance would become significantly cheaper if most of the traffic were bicycles instead of cars though, so that’d be a win. And 6 lane highways could be easily reduced to 4 lane ones, to have space for emergency vehicles and the occasional hauler, with the remaining lane kept for public transport and footpath construction.
My idea to address unfit elderly drivers is once you start claiming SS you have to take the physical driving test every 2 years then every year once you turn 80. 69 might not be old for some people but could be debilitating for others.
Honestly, every licensed driver should have to retake a test every ~5 years.
Even recreational air pilots need a retake every 2 years, and they aren’t a top 10 cause of death.
Make it yearly.
Make it yearly.
Imagine that DMV line! You’d have to book next year’s appointment at the conclusion of your test. Heaven help you is you have to reschedule. Haha!
Opportunity to create jobs!
That may actually provide some impetus to properly fund them so that they can fulfill their agency mission, then.
Most of them don’t have the resources and access to the professionals they need to get it done. Sure, self-serving managerial incompetence really doesn’t help to move projects along or retain talent either.
And the test needs to be way, way harder than it is now. In my state you just drive around the block and then parallel park. No highway driving requirement, no emergency maneuvers, no reaction time test.
The USA should adopt a similar driving license program to Germany and the EU.
Driving is a privilege, not a right and the test needs to reflect that.
And the DMV should charge an arm and a leg for it, because they otherwise can’t handle the traffic
There’d certainly be less people passing if those were missing!
But the ones that didn’t pass or take it at all would still be driving.
@MacGuffin94 @ByteOnBikes Drivers can be unfit &/or negligent at any age. The focus should be on a safe system: streets that naturally limit speed so that crashes that do happen are less severe, vehicles that are appropriately sized and simple to operate, required features like automatic braking and speed limiters, and attractive options like walkable destinations and efficient transit.
Can be, yes.
But are at a statistically significant rate above & below a certain threshold.
Young kids and old folks cause a significant portion of all fatal accidents yet our society provides them no alternatives.
Disagree. Tying it to SS just means it’s a requirement for retirees who need government assistance. Rich old people driving the biggest, fastest cars will get to continue driving recklessly. Same thing with the person below who said the test should be incredibly expensive. Disagree. That only hurts the poor who may rely on their car in cities with terrible public transit infrastructure. In-car driving tests should simply be mandatory every few years for all drivers.
If this was made law, the boomers would get public transit funded so fast.
Nope, they would vote out those who enacted that law so fast.
Damn that’s horrible to see. Spruce Street is so nice too. There is no point to speeding in Philly. There are stop signs or lights every block so you have to come to stop frequently, speeding won’t save you any time.
So many people just can’t understand this. In dense city streets your journey times are usually decided by how long you spend waiting in queues and barely affected at all by your top speed. Which is why you can get around a city by bike faster than by car, even though few transportation riders cruise at much more than ~16mph/25kph on the flat.
I used to think that people just hadn’t thought this through and realized it, but I’ve had a few online discussions where it’s clear some people are just flat out incapable of understanding that when there’s congestion, speeding to a traffic queue most often just means a longer wait in the queue, not a shorter journey time.
“speeding to a traffic queue most often just means a longer wait in the queue, not a shorter journey time.”
Total agree this this statement. I personally drive near the absolute posted limit, or below. I also don’t gun it to the next red light to wait in queue.
Once you shift your driving style to minimise waiting at the next light (which usually means driving the posted limit) you will find the light turns green just before you arrive at the intersection. Traffic engineers usually time traffic signal this way as well.
This means your commute will feel less congested, you will still arrive at your end destination at the same time, and personally feel a little more calm and relaxed.
Though I do have to say if people are speeding behind you and being aggressive, let them pass you (don’t speed-up). They will just get stuck at the next red, and you will just roll up right behind them with no extra time added to your arrival. Them having saved no time all well.
Once you shift your driving style to minimise waiting at the next light (which usually means driving the posted limit) you will find the light turns green just before you arrive at the intersection. Traffic engineers usually time traffic signal this way as well.
There’s a street in my town where the lights are timed such that if you drive the 25mph speed limit you don’t have to stop.
That is unless there’s a bunch of idiots who insist on speeding to a red light, only to stop for five seconds. Then you have get stuck behind them and you also have to stop.
I wish there was some way to communicate to people that they’re on a stretch of road like that so they know that going the speed limit is actually faster and easier than gunning it only to stop again a quarter mile ahead.
Edit: It would be super if car drivers thought streets with bike lanes worked like this. If enough of the streets actually do that, maybe it would get them to slow down next to all bike lanes.
The. Problem is too many streets where the lights are not synchronized, or even synchronized well above the speed limit
My town redid a major street during COViD to cut it from 2 lanes down to one thru lane plus turn lanes. They also synchronized the lights. It’s so much calmer of a street now, and we get through much faster.
They did a lousy job trying to add a bike lane but I guess that’s all you can hope for when the pavement was unchanged
Every major US city I have ever been in is full of dumb idiot assholes with cars that cost twice what I have ever managed to make in a year, racing from stop light to stop light as fast as possible, braking at the last minute.
There are days I have wished I could get away with making an Ocean’s 11 style EMP, purely to disable every car in a 2 mile radius.
There’s plenty to show that tailgating is the entire reason for “rush hour” traffic. Not allowing others to merge safely means you end up with people being cut off or slowed down constantly. Everyone wants to be going the fastest but no one wants to go the quickest.
I leave a huge amount of space on the highway and cruise at a more constant speed to avoid this issue. It always helps traffic behind me flow better. My favourite was a guy behind me who was super pissed off and ran into the on-ramp lane to pass me, honked a bunch, floored it, and then had to slam on the brakes to avoid absolutely obliterating the car in front of me. My car is 50in tall, it’s not hard to see around but people just don’t get it. I figured it out by myself the very first time I went on the highway and yet…
It’s different at lights and stuff, of course, but only a little. Regardless it just goes to show that people have no idea what they’re doing and a whole lot of pent up rage to really make it “fun”.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin said it, but this is a great example of it in practice.
I love the quote. Unfortunately that’s not how averages work.
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.
(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻
Not really a protected bike lane. The car driver entered the bike lane, at high speed, without obstructions.
I just looked at Google Street View. No fucking protection.
Yeah, not surprising that the cops have no fucking clue what protected means.
protected bike lane
[Look inside]
It’s paint
I’m a bit confused that the article says “protected” bike lane but the aerial shot shows no barriers? What exactly is meant by “protected”, because to me (and to google) protected means at least some kind of barrier.
It’s protected by a white line that shows cars aren’t allowed to cross over it?
I guess just municipalities describe it differently then. My city describes protected bike lanes as “dedicated bike lanes with concrete medians and planters, bicycle parking corrals, or vehicle parking lanes that divide them from vehicle traffic.”
The google image someone else posted of the street, to me, shows a regular bike lane.
Doesn’t change anything about this awful incident anyway, just thought the choice of words was interesting. Especially since later on in the article it says her death may have been prevented had there been a concrete median.
I’m also curious about that
This thing (albeit fron New York) allows a “parking lane”, tobe the barrier I’s really hard to ttellif that is the case here; how fast was that thing going on a narrow residential street to do that much damage?
https://www.nycstreetdesign.info/geometry/protected-bike-lane
The driver of the vehicle is 69 years old, police said. He was taken to a nearby hospital after suffering minor injuries. He has not been charged.
I’m sorry, what?
implied: “yet”. It means they are still writing down a list of things to charge him, some of which require waiting for property damage evaluations and so on.
Not necessarily; the vehicle may have malfunctioned or he could have had a health condition (like a heart attack) that caused him to crash.
And maybe he was rich.
He was replying to a very important email. You can’t multitask as well at that age. The cyclist should have known better, obviously.
How those cars that fucked up on a city street like that? Chronic speeding and distracted driving are a stupid combo.
This sucks. But is it supposed to suck more because it’s a doctor?
We may claim the ideal that every life is equal, it is probably not how we actually feel.
The reporting about the recent shooting at a PA political rally largely ignored the one person who died and the two who suffered serious injuries.
We do not value life equally.
I highlighted that and people got triggered.
I don’t think society is willing to accept thats how we act as collective and it is very disturbing. Since one would NOT act like that on their own but when news is running the talking points, we just talk about them. Not what should be discussed.
I mean yeah, she saved kids’ lives and now she’s dead. She probably had a meaningful impact on a lot of people, and saying who she is and how she was important in the community helps us feel the full impact of her death.
No, its supposed to suck more because they were on a bike. /s
