“Accidents”

In a case the Ottawa Citizen called "astonishing evidence of the raw appeal of... victimhood," a woman who struck and killed a teenage boy riding his bike outside of Toronto is suing the boy's family for $1.35 million.

Earlier this year, the NYPD adopted a policy to stop using the term "accident" to describe traffic collisions. The San Francisco police department made similar changes a few months later. The problem with the term "accident," of course, is that it implies no one was at fault -- that traffic injuries and deaths are just random, unpreventable occurrences. It's part of a cultural permissiveness toward dangerous driving, which in turn contributes to the loss of life.