cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31244231
Ian Brossat, a former Paris councillor and now a senator representing the French Communist party, called for SUVs to be banned in Paris. “This is not the first incident of its kind, and the dangerous nature of SUVs has already been pointed out on several occasions. We owe it to this young man to realise the scale of the problem and draw all the consequences,” Brossat told the Nouvel Obs.
This passive language bullshit is so obvious sometimes. “Oh, I wonder what the cyclist did to get run over? And that poor SUV driver getting charged for murder because of this event, Paris is really going off the deep end finding ways to attack innocent drivers.” And yet, per the article, the SUV driver ran down the cyclist in a fit of road rage. That sounds an awful lot like an active choice by the driver, not some passive circumstance that the headline implies. If this person got angry and attacked someone with a knife, and the victim died, the headline wouldn’t be “Knife owner charged with murder after person stabbed”. But use the “right” weapon and all of a sudden we put the kiddie gloves on