Every time a car hits something it's described that way, or in a passive voice.
It's to make the driver/car sound less dangerous.
E.g. "pedestrian dies after collision with car"
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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As someone who lives in car centric city in America, I have never in my life heard a story where a person gets hit by a car and it not be described actively as the drivers fault
It's your lucky day, then!
Car crashes through Milwaukee beauty salon, causes major damage
Why would a car decide to do that? The poor driver just "lost control" of it when it did. The closest this article gets to blaming the driver is to note that they was speeding, which is an implication, at best.
Here's another one:
Car crashes into garage on Northwest Side
No mention of a driver at all!
ETA: Here's one where somebody died:
18-year-old dead after vehicle crashes into Grand Chute building
Fascinating that a passenger van would decide to enter a building all on its own like that. Apparently this van had a driver, who is a victim, too.
The point, though, is that none of those are "a salon crashed into my car"
But neither do those articles actively discuss the crash as the driver's fault, so the commenter is able to have a first-time-in-their-life experience.
But neither do those articles actively discuss the crash as the driver's fault
That's because in every one of the given examples it's painfully obvious the driver is at fault. Those aren't scenarios where there's any ambiguity. It's not a scenario where a car hit someone on a highway, where fault could easily be either direction.
Driving into a building is clearly caused by the driver of the vehicle. That's the situation in all of those examples.
Disagree. These articles plainly, on the face of it, blame the car. You can infer whatever you like, but that's just splitting hairs to avoid acknowledging that they explicitly state that the car did it.
You sure about that? Many of the close calls I’ve had as both a pedestrian and a cyclist, the car driver seems pretty sure it was my fault.
In the US, non-drivers are a second thought at best, but probably a nuisance
For example, crossing the street with all reds, cars stopped all directions, walk light on, in the crosswalk. I didn’t actually hear what the driver who almost hit me yelled but probably something like “get out of the road during bmw priority time”. (Pretty sure she turned left because “already in the intersection” bs that some people use to run red lights - we definitely need a crackdown on people who enter the instersection after the light changes “it was yellow, bro” despite it not being close )
You sure about that? Many of the close calls I’ve had as both a pedestrian and a cyclist, the car driver seems pretty sure it was my fault.
Of course the driver of the vehicle is going to say that. Otherwise they would have to admit they fucked up.
That's not a comparable situation though to what I'm talking about. Your example is about the driver of the vehicle in question, not someone reading about an event later that wasn't involved. To an uninvolved third party, they're not going to say that a pedestrian is at fault most of the time when it's just a car versus pedestrian. They're going to assume the driver of the death mobile was the issue.
The passive voice, simplistically, makes the object of a clause optional (active voice make the subject optional).
Active: car crashes (into salon)
Passive: salon crashed into (by car)
Your example is swapping the object and subject and changes the meaning.
It's not a question of active vs passive, just who the actor is. Swapping the actor implicitly swaps blame.
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Car hits bicyclist (car implied at fault, as with all the examples above).
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Bicyclist collides with car (bicyclist implied at fault, they must have been doing something that caused them to get hit).
The assertion made above is that the latter trend is more common, but it was disputed, and the other examples provided in response just follow the first model.
Where I'm from, you have to be careful on the back roads, especially at night. Pedestrians will suddenly run out from the trees and just slam into your car.
I still remember driving down any road and the windshield was completely covered in bugs.
Now I am surprised if I even hit a bug at all.
They’ve finally learned to avoid roads.
Try the great lakes region during Fish Fly season
Upvote for the Wikipedia link.
Anthropocentrism (from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) 'human' and κέντρον (kéntron) 'center') is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From an anthropocentric perspective, humankind is seen as separate from nature and superior to it, and other entities (animals, plants, minerals, etc.) are viewed as resources for humans to use.