This is going to come across as a bit of an emotional outburst, and it should. Also, it's probably one that more than a few of you reading this can unfortunately relate to. If you have, or you know someone who's ever been involved in a road incident with drivers that either aren't paying attention, are driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or are road raging in your general direction, then some part of you will likely resonate with a change the French government is about to make.
For the past couple of years, a bill has been moving through the French legislature that would reclassify road deaths that meet certain criteria as "road homicides." Previously, they'd been known by the fairly bloodless and faintly awful phrase "involuntary manslaughter."
Why do I characterize it as being 'faintly awful?' Because it's about as effective a descriptor as every terrible, tortured, passive-voice headline you've ever seen. You know, phrasing like "A Bullet Went Through The Head Of A 12-Year-Old Child," where the concentration is on the bullet and the 12-year-old, but whoever wrote the piece doesn't want to talk about who shot it, nor why. Maybe it'll be brought up in passing in the article that follows the headline, but not always. It's offensive on a journalistic level, and it's also terrible writing. Zero stars.
