You never hear the phrase “Plane Accident”. It’s always “Plane Crash”. Why? A crash almost always has a human element of error or random component failure (typically also caused by some sort of human error in design and/or maintenance). I’ve hit a few deer that some would classify as an accident. But a local sheriff smartly pointed out that I was driving on a road called “Deer Alley” by the locals. I slowed down after the two deer/car encounters and did not hit another because the actual cause of my crashes were excessive speed for the conditions.
I actually agree with @ChrisTheTireWhisperer for once. We love to say things were “an accident” but truthfully we bear the blame for inattentiveness, carelessness, excessive speed, poor maintenance, and other things that make it a crash, rather than an accident.
I always liked the CG’s distinction of collision (hitting a moving object (another vessel) vs allision- hitting a stationary one (cough…like a bridge pier).
I follow an aviation podcast (“Mentour Pilot”) hosted by an airline training captain. One thing stresses, is that while freak, bolt-out-of-the blue accidents do occur…. most accidents/crashes are a series of small missteps, misjudgments, miscommunications, that, individually, are non issues; collectively spell disaster.
Yeah I like him. He just couldn’t accept that the air India pilot actually crashed the plane on purpose. It one thing to kill yourself over demons in your head but quite another to take 270 other innocents with you.
Wow, had not heard that term before, even in conjunction with the container ship Dali hitting the Francis Scott Key bridge. Heck, not even mentioned when I took the CG Aux boating class 30 years ago. Bet our friends on the other side of the pond came up this that term.
My commute takes me through a bottleneck every day. On my drive home, it’s not unusual for the first 21 miles of freeway to take an hour. I routinely see fender benders and crashes. How hard can it be to stay in your lane and not run into the car in front of you.
My pet peeve…traffic is crawling along and I’m in the HOV/Toll lane doing 50+ when someone changes lanes right in front of me.
There should be a slight difference in meaning, the former that the thing will burn, the latter that it will ignite readily. I used to live near the shore of a salt lake. I’d pick up pieces of lumber that washed ashore - detritus from some construction project. I heated with wood, threw those pieces in. They’d burn if something else was burning but wouldn’t support a flame on their own. I thought of that as the difference. I don’t think the words actually bear my preferred meaning though. Think of ‘cite’ and ‘incite’.
I follow that podcast too. He does excellent objective analysis and careful breakdown of each scenario to show why most crashes are totally preventable (and have often lead to changes in aviation policies, training, and equipment).