Media Monitor

Focus on human agency rather than vehicles. Write "driver collided" instead of "car collided" or "vehicle struck pedestrian" to maintain accountability for operation.

Do not prematurely assign blame to vulnerable road users (e.g. "pedestrian was not wearing high-vis" or "crossed outside zebra crossing") before formal crash investigation findings are published.

Do not refer to a person by the name of their vehicle (e.g. "the scooters" instead of the rider). Use "the scooter operator" or "scooter rider" to preserve the human dimension of the incident.

Acknowledge that crashes are not isolated, freak incidents. Mention broader traffic safety statistics, local infrastructure factors, or repeating safety patterns.

Avoid graphic details, dramatic descriptions, or fate-based framing (e.g., "tragedy", "horror crash", "bloody collision") to ensure professional, informative reporting.

Language shapes how the public and policymakers understand road danger. When a preventable collision is presented as an “accident”, or a report leaves out who was driving, the causes that could be fixed disappear from view.

There is currently no official EU legislation or guideline on how news media report road collisions. Our rules are adapted from the Road Collision Reporting Guidelines (Active Travel Academy, University of Westminster, UK, 2021), produced in consultation with road safety, legal, media and policing organisations, and featured by the European Commission in the resource library of its European Road Safety Charter. The same principles appear in European and international guidance: Unfallsprache – Sprachunfall (Universität Bern, Universität Wien and RIFS Potsdam, 2025, for German-speaking countries), Reporting on Traffic Crashes: Best Practices (Vital Strategies, 2021) and the World Health Organization’s guidance on reporting road safety.