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Newspeak is No Accident at NHTSA, Says Automotive News

14 July 1997

Newspeak is No Accident at NHTSA, Says Automotive News

    DETROIT, July 14 -- The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has slipped into an era of Newspeak straight out of
George Orwell's book "1984," according to an article in today's edition of
Automotive News.
    The industry trade paper reports that NHTSA, the government's safety
agency, has banned the word "accident."
    The action was taken at the behest of NHTSA Administrator Dr. Ricardo
Martinez because "accident" conveys the wrong impression.
    Following is the complete text of the article published in the July 14
edition of Automotive News:

    WASHINGTON -- Many safety experts dislike the word "accident" because it
suggests "unavoidable."  Nonsense, they say -- all accidents are avoidable.
    That is especially the case these days at headquarters of the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration -- where "accidents" have been outlawed.
Henceforth, by unavoidable order of NHTSA Administrator Dr. Ricardo Martinez:

    *  The Accident Investigation Division has become the Crash Investigation
       Division.

    *  The Fatal Accident Reporting System has become the Fatal Analysis
       Reporting System.

    *  The National Accident Sampling System is now the National Automotive
       Sampling System.

    The latter two are the agency's databases on fatal crashes and on
accident, oops, crash patterns.
    NHTSA spokesman Tim Hurd insisted last week that there is a logic to the
word ban.
    "It's an indication of Dr. Martinez's serious approach to this.  He's
willing to make these changes to focus people's attention on how to avoid pain
and suffering," he said.
    But Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
thinks any agency that has the time to tinker with the English language has
far too much time on its hands.
    "If that's true," he said, "it seems to me that NHTSA should explain how
its own rule-making accidents occur."
    Automotive News is published each Monday in Detroit by Crain
Communications Inc., a privately held company that publishes 30 consumer,
business and trade publications.

SOURCE  Automotive News