HGVs/lorries/cyclists: Inquest into death of Meryem Ozekman

A distressing inquest, mainly for the lack of good evidence (not unusual, by all accounts) and the resulting lack of clarity as to what happened. Proceedings also seem extremely brief.

As for Ufrasia's question, 'accidents' are understood according to the definition given by the coroner: 'An accident is the consequence of an unintended act.'

It is very interesting to try and understand this. Clearly, the act of killing was unintended. There was no corresponding act such as 'being killed' on the part of the victim, as being killed is passive and not an act. However, there were other actions involved. It was not unintended that the lorry driver turned left; he intended to turn left. Likewise, the cyclist's movements were intended by her.

(I'm not going to speculate on what happened, nor accept the finding of the inquest as given, as I'm not convinced by the evidence that she fell of her own accord rather than being 'closed in on' by the lorry in the turning manoeuvre. The first witness was really too far away (150 yards) and the second witness did not see the collision/crash/fall.)

When you narrow it down further, after these intended acts comes an unintended coincidence--an event resulting from the two separately caused actions here, which in itself is fully caused. So, the 'accident' here would be better described as 'the consequence of an unintended coincidence'. (Not the/an 'unintended consequence', as the coincidence was itself unintended, and no consequences arising from it were therefore either intended or unintended--the question simply doesn't arise.)

Now, it is clear that if each of these tragic incidents is considered in isolation, the occurrences can often, indeed, be described as accidental--e.g., neither party intended the consequences of the coincidence and neither wanted them to happen.

However, there are a number of reasons why people, including many campaigners, object to the use of the word 'accident' for road traffic collisions. Firstly, it is a avery stretchy word that can even be applied to a crash in which a speeding motorist 'accidentally' kills a vulnerable road user--i.e., while he may have been speeding, he of course didn't intend to kill.

Also, the overall picture is anything but accidental. In fact, failing powerful interventions, such as, for instance, a part-time lorry ban in Central London, it is depressingly predictable what is going to happen year in, year out.

Most importantly, if these crashes continue to be thought of as 'accidents', that suggests that they are somehow events that occur outside the traffic system and that the traffic system doesn't need fixing--as the 'unintended' nature of these accidents shows, 'they are not built into the system' (when of course they are).

That the intention not to reign in road danger exists somewhere much higher up the food chain in transport policy, giving priority to volumes of motor traffic, fast movement of freight by road, etc. (as reducing road danger at source is not perceived to be conducive to motor traffic), is not something that comes to the surface in limited inquest proceedings such as this.

Of course the driver has a vivid interest in thinking of this incident as an 'accident' (and I'm not saying that this crash could not be described as such)--who'd want to bear all the consequences of a systematically wrong transport policy on their shoulders, or of the stupid design of the Elephant and Castle?--, but 'accident' after 'accident' adds up to a false perception of the big picture, which does need changing. It is much better to speak of 'incidents' and 'crashes', as these words are more neutral and less emotionally charged, and if the right practical consequences were drawn from this different terminology, perhaps we might start to see some change. All to campaign for.

Thanks Oliver.