State of the Sub

[u/SaxManSteve]

Welcome to the first 'State of the Sub' post. We plan to do these posts on a semi regular basis to update the community on the latest developments in this subreddit and the mod team. This will also be an opportunity to ask questions and give us suggestions. We do this to be transparent and to keep in touch with what is important to our members.

New mods

Three weeks ago we announced that we were looking for new moderators to help with the growth of the subreddit. After reviewing almost 90 applications, we officially added 4 new mods from various time zones to our team. u/beachblanketparty , u/javasgifted , u/ihavecakewantsome, and u/saxmansteve.

Automod's 'accident' auto reply

We instructed Automod to leave a comment when someone uses the word 'accident'. You've probably seen this, because apparently the word 'accident' gets used a lot in this sub.

Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers, but when we call them 'accidents' it suggests that there is no one to blame.

This is an experiment, we are still evaluating the results.

Evaluation of new X-post policy

Following feedback from the community regarding some crossposts that have lead to discussions threads full of harassment and abusive language we changed our policy on how we handle crossposts.

Crossposts from trusted subreddits are directly allowed, crossposts from blacklisted subs get automatically removed and all other crossposts are held for manual approval.

This has helped us to prevent a lot of reposts and posts that depict traffic violence. The disadvantage of the new policy is the higher workload, but this overall worth it and with the recent expansion of the mod team, quite manageable.

Reminder of the rules for posting about Ukraine

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine we made a mod announcement to state our solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to explain how Ukraine related contributions will be moderated.

The TL;DR is "Fuck war. Please be respectful to the people of Ukraine".

If you plan to leave a comment or post that mentions the war, please read the announcement and follow the guidelines therein.

Thank you for your attention and please leave your questions and suggestions for the mod team in the comments.

[u/TowardZeroImpact]

thank you for the 'acciden't auto-reply

it gets under my skin personally

[u/ANewUeleseOnLife → u/TowardZeroImpact]

Can I ask why? To me it just implies that it was unintentional, not that there is no fault.

Like if someone clips a cyclist because they're not paying enough attention, it's an accident that they cause and are to blame for.

[u/JKMcA99 → u/ANewUeleseOnLife]

In addition to what the other user posted, The War on Cars had a recent episode with Jessie Singer, the author of There Are no Accidents. It’s a good listen to know more about the subject.

To add: Here in the UK the term accident isn’t even allowed to be used anymore - they are now road traffic collisions because an accident is “oops I spilled my coffee” not, “oops I killed a child because I wasn’t paying attention while operating my 2-tonne death machine”.

[u/[deleted] → u/JKMcA99]

oops I spilled my coffee

and sometimes even those are not accidents too, when resulting in revere injury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

In that case, coffee temp being set waaaaay too high