Twin Cities Streets for People

On his blog, Tom Vanderbilt writes about his frustration with the passive voice in describing car crashes, saying that different ways of describing a crash suggest different levels of agency:

In any case, here’s how today’s Times story began:

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was killed and a second woman was seriously injured on Friday afternoon when a driver, apparently intoxicated and following the women as they walked down a Midtown Manhattan street, lost control of a supermarket maintenance van, which jumped onto the sidewalk and slammed into them, the police and witnesses said.

I wondered about a different way to construct the opening line:

An apparently intoxicated driver killed a 28-year-old pregnant woman and seriously injured a second when he lost control of his van and slammed into them, the police and witnesses said.

This needs tinkering, admittedly, but the point is clear: In the first case, the question of agency is put down less to the driver than to the van, which mysteriously jumped the curb, leading to the method by which the woman “was killed.” The second point brings the point home more quickly, and I think leaves the reader feeling differently.

Vanderbilt's piece is interesting, and if the New York Times is having trouble with its journalism, surely the Twin Cities reporters are too? I was wondering how local journalism stacked up, so I did some looking at the descriptions of the recent fatal bike and ped crashes on Park Avenue.

• The Star tribune:

Minneapolis cyclist in bike lane killed by semi truck

…a semitrailer driver began to make a wide left turn, crossing in front of Dumm and hitting and killing the 31-year-old cyclist.

• City pages

Bicyclist killed in downtown Minneapolis

A bicyclist was killed this morning in an accident with a semi tractor in downtown Minneapolis, according to the Pioneer Press. Police arrived at the scene around 7:40 a.m. at 14th Street East and Park Avenue South. The bicyclist was dead by the time police arrived.

• MPR

Cyclist killed by truck in downtown Minneapolis

A bicyclist was killed early Wednesday morning near downtown Minneapolis after being crushed by a tractor trailer hauling concrete and asphalt, police said. The accident occurred around 7:40 a.m. at the intersection of 14th Street East and Park Avenue South, according to Minneapolis Police Sgt. Bill Palmer. Both vehicles were traveling north on Park Avenue when the accident occurred. The truck driver hit the bicyclist while trying to make a left turn onto 14th Street, Palmer said.

• Downtown Journal

Cyclist killed in accident with semi

A bicyclist was killed early this morning in an accident involving a semi tractor pulling a large dump box at the intersection of 14th Street East and Park Avenue. 

Minneapolis police responded to the scene at 7:40 a.m., according to a news release about the incident. The Minneapolis Police Department’s Traffic Unit is investigating the accident along with the Minnesota State Patrol’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Unit. 


• Fm. KSAX-TV (ABC) near Alexandria

Semi vs. bicycle accident kills 1
 
A bicyclist died after being run over by a semi truck Wednesday morning in Minneapolis.
At 7:40 a.m. police were called to the intersection of 14th Street East and Park Avenue South.
Police said both the truck and the bike were headed north on Park Avenue South. The collision occured when the truck tried to make a left turn.
 

This last one is clearly the worst. KSAX uses only the passive voice to describe the crash, and doens't mention the truck driver at all. Instead, the truck is an impersonal object, without any sort of human agency guiding it.

The Downtown Journal is the next worst, as they emphasize the word 'accident', and use the passive voice again without any real description of the situation.

MPR and City Pages are pretty much tied, though I like MPR a bit more because of they suggest that the cyclist was "killed by truck" instead of just "kiiled" in an accident. MPR also includes some level of agency and metions the driver, saying that the "truck driver hit the bicyclist" (which is, indeed, exactly what happened).

But the Star Tribune takes the cake, and is the best. They not only include the fact that the cyclist was in the bike lane in the headline of the story, they have the most direct connection between the actions of the driver and the death of the cyclist. (To be fair, this is a later updated version of the story that appeared after more details were available.)

Attirbuting responsibility for a crash is a difficult problem. How much fault goes to the traffic engineer, the drivers of the car, or good or bad conditions?

If anyone's interested, I've also attached a two page article worth reading by Tom Vanderbilt about how to report on a car crash.