So-called accidents
Why is any conflict between two or more motor vehicles, or a car and a pedestrian, commonly referred to as an accident? It is a collision.
What is the difference? An accident is an event that is without apparent cause or that is unexpected.
In the vast majority of so-called “accidents,” one of the persons involved was not paying attention or driving recklessly. That can hardly be called an accident. It should be described as a collision.
To put it in simpler terms, if someone is driving on the road and a branch from a tree breaks and falls, and subsequently damages the vehicle — that is an accident.
But if the driver is on his cellphone, eating or otherwise not giving all of his attention to the task of driving and runs into the tree, that can only be identified as a collision.
So let’s stop misidentifying a collision as an accident and start calling it what it is.
Michael L. Last
Na‘alehu
Clean up bay
Hilo Bay inside the breakwater is a very sad proposition.
Cleaning up the bay is long overdue, and no time or money should be spared to get it done. Hilo has such limited ocean access for residents and visitors as matters stand. Opening up Bayfront by cleaning up the water would transform Hilo and realize its full potential as the slice of paradise we who live here know it is.
Only shortsighted politicians and county officials will keep from getting it done expeditiously.
Tom Goltz
Hilo
Abortion law
Recently, I listened to our Lt. Gov. Josh Green, a doctor, discuss the restrictive abortion law passed by the state of Mississippi.
He stated that he would never let his daughter be discriminated against in that way. Did he mean that he would perform the abortion?
How diabolical that would be to abort your own grandchild.
Vernon King
Volcano