Let's get active with drivers

We here in the West have grown up being taught to eschew passive verbs in favour of active verbs. A brief, simple lesson in grammar can help clarify this.

Quick grammar primer

In English, I might say  "the ball was kicked by Jennifer." Look at the pieces of this sentence:

• the subject, the person doing the action, is Jennifer;
• the action being done, the verb, is kicking or, specifically, (was) kicked;
• the object, the thing being done to by the action, is the ball.

And, hey, free bonus - this provides simple clarification on when to use "who" vs. when to use "whom" - "who" is the subject, the one doing something; "whom" is the object...so, I can ask "Who (the subject) is speaking?" or "To whom (the object) am I (the subject) speaking?" but not "Who am I speaking to?" But I digress...

Note, the order of the pieces - object, verb, subject. And we here in the West do not like this.

If I had written that in grade 3, it's likely my teacher, dearest Mrs. Beaumont, would have had me rewrite it as "Jennifer kicked the ball." Subject - verb - object. One does something to another; not, another had something done to it by one. 

Digest this, we must

Now, sure, not all languages follow this approach. If you are Yoda, you might use a verb-object-subject approach. "Seeking someone, you are? Found someone, you have." And in some languages, apparently, word order is less important or, even, not important at all. I'm told Russian is like this, but I don't speak Russian, so I can't say first hand. At any rate, English requires a certain order to make sense. We can write "Jennifer kicked the ball", but we cannot write "the ball kicked Jennifer" if we intend for it to mean the same thing. We would have to inject "was kicked by" for it to approximate what we intended to convey.

Do a search for writing style guidelines, and you'll see this is a big deal in our societal world view. Part of the thrust is that we, as a society, are keenly interested in accountability, responsibility, ownership. And "keenly interested" is understated - in fact, we're rather obsessed with it.

There are languages that can say "Raining." A verb. No subject. For us English speakers, we can't have an action that is not done by someone or something. So, we insert "It (is)". Now ask yourself, what is the "it" that it raining? Would we ever say "The sky is raining"? "They clouds are raining"? Nope, never. Nothing is raining, rain is just happening. But, that's not good enough for our obsession, so we shove a phantom "It" in there just to satisfy our obsession. And we don't even have to explain it - our obsession is woven into the very fabric of our cultural and linguistic tapestry.

Were you abused as a child? Get over it! Stop blaming everyone else and take responsibility for your own happiness in life (as if you chose to be abused when you were seven years old, right?)

It borders on irrational, such is our obsession with personal responsibility...

Passing the buck with passivity

...Except, for some curious reason, when we talk about drivers - all of a sudden, we are overcome in an avalanche of passivity that, given our obsession, is all the more suspicious, all the more egregious.

• "She was T-boned by an SUV back in 2015 while riding her bike to work on Bathurst Street, just north of Eglinton Avenue West."
• "The 35-year-old personal trainer broke the base of her spine in the crash,..." (this and one above are from same article, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/textalyzer-toronto-1.5343303 )
• "Giraffe Dies After Hitting Its Head on Highway Bridge" (https://mashable.com/2014/07/31/giraffe-dies-highway-bridge/)
  
  

Look at that first quote: "She was t-boned by an SUV". Object first? Blech. 

And the subject..."an SUV"? Really? Would it make sense to read "The victim was shot by...a gun"? or "The victim was stabbed by... a knife"? or how about "The student broke his orbital bone after being punched in the face by...a fist"? This is absurd. We neither speak nor write like that. Remember our obsession with the subject doing something? Remember how we invent phantom subjects ("It") just to satisfy our obsession?

Except, magically, when talking about people who drive their vehicles with criminal negligence causing injury and death to others.

About that second quote, did the 35-year old personal trainer really break the base of her spine? Really? No, she didn't. The driver of the vehicle did. Active verbs, please. Own it.

And, about that giraffe. Oy vey. Look at the image below:

A Twitter user posted this picture moments before the incident

See? The giraffe did not "hit its head." The driver failed to recognize that the height of the giraffes in the trailer might exceed the height restrictions of the highway on which he was driving and, in that failure, drove the giraffe into the bridge. It was the driver's negligence that caused the giraffe's death. Giraffes are not trained to duck to avoid low bridges while being driven around in trailers on a fucking highway. 

Oh, the lengths to which we go! The grammatical hoops through which we seem determined to jump to avoid in any way implicating drivers for their own actions is beyond absurd. "War on the car?" Balderdash - this is a war not only on the English language, but a war that being waged by drivers on the people they are striking. And the casualties are mounting.

Active verbs, please. Own it.

Metaphysics and the law

Some might argue that a driver may not have been guilty of anything if, say, the pedestrian jumped out in front of a driver or a cyclist suddenly swerved into the path of the driver, and the driver had no time to stop. But that does not prevent us from using active language to describe the event as it happened while leaving culpability to due process. It's okay to say the driver struck a pedestrian or, even, a driver collided with a cyclist, and leave determination of culpability to due process. In fact, that even happened to me, as a driver, years ago.

Harrowing personal experience

I was driving through a residential area, approaching an area where some kids were playing in a driveway. The whole sequence of events unfolded seemingly in slow motion: the little girl was pushing another little boy in a plastic riding toy. She and I had eye contact for a moment and then, suddenly - as if possessed - she cranked the boy at a 90 degree angle and shoved him out into the street, directly into my path. I swerved, narrowly avoiding driving into the child, but his momentum carried him into the side of my vehicle as I came to a stop. 

I remained at the scene while police were called, of course. There were witnesses up and down the street who saw the whole thing. The police arrived, attended to the child (determining there were no injuries worth a trip to the hospital), and did their investigation, taking my statement of what happened; interviewing several of the witnesses; looking at the physical evidence on the street and, having determined that all the available evidence corroborated my side of the story, told me I was free to go, no charges laid. 

In addition to the testimony of the eyewitnesses, the police officer told me she looked at physical evidence that included

• no skid marks on the road that might have indicated I was driving excessively fast; but the lack of skid marks indicating I was able to come to a stop fairly easily;
• the proximity from the driveway to where my vehicle was stopped, indicated I was not driving fast, and was able to stop the car in a short distance without skidding. Which is true, and why, even though I did collide with the youngster, there were no injuries. I wasn't driving out of control, or speeding through the 40km/h zone;
• the attitude of the vehicle, not pointing straight up the road, but angled away from the right side of the street where the children had been playing.

Yes, I, as the driver, collided with a child. I can say that, I can own it. Sure, I didn't jump the curb and hit the child on the front lawn, or even on the sidewalk. Yes, I was operating the vehicle within the law, in the space allotted to vehicular traffic. Sure, one can just as easily say the child struck my vehicle. Either way, we collided, that was metaphysical reality; however, was I criminally responsible for anything? Speeding? Reckless driving? Criminal negligence? In the opinion of both the witnesses who were good enough to speak up for me, as well as the police who attended the scene, I was not.

An ounce of prevention

If, however, that child happened to have been pushed into a crosswalk or other pedestrian right of way when we collided, I'm not sure the outcome would have been as good for me (it could have been argued I did not slow down sufficiently in an area wherein I was to drive through a pedestrian right of way). In this harrowing experience, it bode well for me that I was in the right space when the collision occurred, but I learned a lesson that slowing down in residential areas or areas with right of ways for others (streetcars, cyclists, pedestrians) is always a good idea, and there's a reason "old adages" stick around - because they are true. An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure. We drivers should stop thinking we are rewarded for taking risk. Driving the streets is not a game, there are real lives out there.

Calling out the media (to whatever degree "language controls thought")

Active verbs should not be avoided out of some unmerited fear that using them may unfairly implicate a driver, nor impede due process. Active verbs should be used, not only because, as Mrs. Beaumont taught me, and all our teachers and writing gurus have been telling us forever, it's just gooder English; but, also, and more importantly, doing so can help put proper focus on drivers, and the responsibility they - we (because I am a driver, too) - need to own, while sharing public spaces with other stakeholders, such as pedestrians, cyclists, public transit vehicles, people using wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility assists.

The very language in media today makes the victim the focus, and fails to appropriate due accountability to the drivers in these situations. The problem of drivers striking pedestrians and cyclists persists, in large part, because we're not focusing on the parties that are primarily responsible for (or, at least, have an active role in) these collisions - not the vehicles, but the drivers.

But, what about cyclists and pedestrians? Are they ever at fault? Sure, they are. Should cyclists and pedestrians know more about the rules of the road? Sure, they should. Are cyclists and pedestrians utterly powerless? Have they no opportunity to contribute to making the streets safer for everyone? Of course not. I've written about this side of the issue as well (see Pay Attention). I'm a cyclist and a pedestrian too, and bad habits I see from this contingent are downright dangerous and should be addressed (and I do get specific in that article to which I linked above).

But "whatabouting" is not constructive here - this article is about how the media twists and tramples on language to protect drivers and shifts focus away from what they can do to make the streets safer for everyone, including themselves. This article is saying, "hey media - quit it."

So, dear media, if you're serious about helping to curb the violence that is being perpetrated on a daily basis on our streets, quit with all this passive absurdity, and use proper grammar with active verbs that focus on the subject which owns the action — drivers.