Government scraps term 'road accident'

The word ‘accident’ will no longer be used in Government road casualty statistics and reports, the Department for Transport said yesterday.

The announcement, which coincided with the release of 2021 UK road casualty data, marks a victorious moment for road victims’ charities and campaigners, who have been calling for these changes to be made for many years.

RoadPeace, the national charity for road crash victims, has led a long-running ‘Crash not accident’ campaign, calling the term accident ‘the language of denial.’

RoadPeace has said on the issue: “‘Accident’ suggests something unintentional, and beyond control. It is, as one of our members has said, a description with an excuse embedded within it. The phrase “it was just an accident” serves both as a claim of innocence and as an exoneration."

It is hoped that this move will help to gradually reduce the use of the word ‘accident’ in day to-day-life by members of the public and the media, which feeds the idea that road crashes are inevitable.