When I first began to hear car accidents described as crashes, I struggled with the following idea. An accident is something you don't do on purpose. The answer is no. People in crashes do not mean to hurt themselves or other people.
Clinicians involved in trauma care now refer to car accidents as car crashes.
The reason we do that is because most crashes have a clear path of mistakes that lead to the crash. I can give you some examples. A young man hits a bridge and is thrown from the vehicle, breaking a vertebra. A young man hits a bridge, is ejected from the vehicle which lands on him in the river, and he drowns before rescuers can lift the truck off him. All of these crashes occurred recently in our neighborhood.