Photo by the author.

Writers and commenters here at Greater Greater Washington frequently note the onset of the windshield perspective in reporters, columnists, and other bloggers. In news stories, drivers are frequently left out in favor of their car, which seems to have been the sole party in the accident. Recently, I’ve also noticed a frequent misleading use of verbs or the active voice to seemingly implicate the train in a rail-car or rail-pedestrian collision. David has written about the use of the passive voice in the media, and makes several good points.

The most egregious case of this I’ve seen appeared in the Chicago Tribune over the summer. In the wake of a tragic accident, their story’s headline screamed: “Amtrak train rams car, killing Joliet husband and wife.” Reading the article, however, one discovers that the couple made an illegal right turn in front of the northbound Texas Eagle, which was traveling about 60 mph. The Amtrak driver had no chance to stop, yet some reporter thinks he’s guilty of “ramming.” The Tribune article is no longer available. Here’s a link to WGN Radio’s article.

The Amtrak engineer was not at fault. Police report that the crossing gates and lights were working. In all likelihood, this was a tragic case of driver error. The road which the car was on is parallel to the tracks. At a signal, the sixty-four year old driver turned right onto a street crossing the tracks. She did so in violation of a sign which lights up when a train is approching prohibiting right turns. It is likely she was paying attention to the regular through-movement signal, which was green.

But the Tribune’s headline was rather inflammatory. The train didn’t ram the vehicle. It was just traveling along the tracks when a vehicle started to cross in front of it. Trains take time to stop. A more appropriate headline might have been “Driver turns in front of train, two killed.” Consider the Sun-Times’ article title, “At least one killed in train vs. car accident.” Or that of WGN News, “Two people killed when Amtrak train hits car.”

This is not, unfortunately, a first for the Tribune. In a search of their archives, I unearthed two other articles where a train “rammed” a vehicle which should not have been on the tracks. In one 1999 incident, a driver drove around the crossing gates to beat a commuter train, which “rammed” his car. Earlier, in 1988, a twenty year old driver, trying to beat the train in Morton Grove was “rammed” by an Amtrak train.

There is, of course, no mention in the article about the engineer. He or she will likely suffer greatly from knowing that he or she was behnind the throttle of a locomotive that killed two. The San Jose Mercury News recently delved into the topic of the trauma suffered by Caltrain engineers after collisions (h/t TOW).

Unfortunately, this is not isolated to the Chicago Tribune. Seattle recently opened their first light rail line. During construction, some vocal opponents decried the “dangerous” situation that Link would create in the city. So shortly after opening, I was disappointed to read this headline “Light-rail train hits, kills pedestrian.” In this case, while all the verbs are correct, one of the nouns isn’t. The struck person was not a pedestrian, but a person committing suicide-by-transit. Still the headline seems to place the blame on ‘dangerous’ Link.

The most common misleading use of grammar is to give the train the active voice in a headline. Despite the fact that many crashes are caused by impatient or imprudent drivers, trains often do the “striking” while autos and pedestrians are “struck”. Technically this is correct, the train does often hit the person or vehicle on the track, but the use of passive voice for the auto or pedestrian alleviates the responsibility of the “object”, placing it instead on the subject.

Consider these two headlines from different places. The first, from OregonLive.com, uses the active voice, “Train kills man in Woodburn as he tries to cross tracks.” Here, the train does the action to the pedestrian, who according to witnesses, misjudged the speed of the train when he tried to beat it. Alternatively, the Chicago Sun-Times reports a “Man struck fatally by freight train on West Side.” In the latter case, the implication of guilt is not put on either party.

Using the right verbiage in news articles is important because the way the press treats these stories affects the way the public views rail and transit projects. If communities look at trains as dangerous (and if they go around ramming cars at random, they probably are dangerous), they will be more likley to fight them. But also by taking responsibility away from the car driver, other motorists don’t see the danger involved in trying to beat the train.

Matt Johnson has lived in the Washington area since 2007. He has a Master’s in Planning from the University of Maryland and a BS in Public Policy from Georgia Tech. He lives in Dupont Circle. He’s a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and is an employee of the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. His views are his own and do not represent those of his employer.