NIP arrived. 936Following up to Mark Foster only in your opinion, the authorities quoted earlier by others think otherwise...
I have several thanks and I understand the meanings perfectly. The point is that the word is used far too liberally and serves to absolve the responsible party from blame. "I couldn't help it, it was an accident". The fact remains that when we are talking about incidents on the road, almost invariably someone f***ed up. That is NOT an "accident". The media don't help matters when they habitually report incidents as "the car went out out control". No it didn't, the driver lost control and that's a completely different thing.
I guess my point is that I hate weasel words like "accident", "dangerous road", "went out of control". They all imply that someone-thing other than the driver is responsible and in the vast majority of cases that is simply not so. All the time people are allowed to pbutt the buck rather than be made to accept the consequences of their actions we will get nowhere. Whatever happened to personal integrity and honour?
-- Mark Foster, Brighton, Suslove, UK PGP Fingerprint: 3342 C02C 7BE8 3FE4 AAC5 8BB2 03B7 9263 DDF2 04C1 -------------------------------------------------- "There are no such useless words as...'I didn't have a chance.'" Driving, HMSO