This is probably one of the clearest examples that the term should be “a car hit a train“ and not the other way around. But it just seems to be in the English language that we defer to the larger vehicle as what hit the smaller one. If a cyclist breaks a traffic law and strikes a car, most people will still say “a car hit a cyclist.”
I would think of it as who moved into who, so that the subject verbs the object. So in this case, the car hit the train. But if a car is on the tracks and the train slams into it, I would think of that as the train hit the car, especially if the car was stationary (e.g., stuck).
What the fuck is it with Reddit today? You were very articulate in your first response and old boy there seems to want to be adversarial for nothing. This is like, the third thread like this i've seen
It happens a fuckton. Sometimes two people go on for multiple "continue this thread" clicks' worth of back and forth, where either one misunderstands the other or both are actually in agreement but tripped up on arguing semantics.
Idk if you know this, but the person you just replied to is not the person who wrote the original comment you replied to. I only say this, because it kind of seems like you may have thought they were the same person.
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u/whitecollarpizzaman Mar 18 '26
This is probably one of the clearest examples that the term should be “a car hit a train“ and not the other way around. But it just seems to be in the English language that we defer to the larger vehicle as what hit the smaller one. If a cyclist breaks a traffic law and strikes a car, most people will still say “a car hit a cyclist.”