Let's Call It A Car Crash, That Sounds Exciting!

Achievement Unlocked: Collision!
Be in a car accident for the first time

I feel a little bad saying things like "I was in my first car accident yesterday."  I know a guy whose brother died in a car accident.  I'm still alive and obviously in a good enough condition to blog about it.  Some people don't get that chance.

This is completely unrelated to my "accident", but: don't text and drive.  I have no personal experience with other people texting and driving, but I'm aware it's caused a lot of accidents.  So don't.  Don't drink either.  And try not to sleep, eat, drink, or be itchy while driving either.  Actually, just don't drive.  All this traffic freaks us L drivers out.

(If you have no idea what an L is in terms of driving, you probably don't live around here, so you're not close enough to worry about me hitting you with a car.)

The first three terms I thought of to describe bad things and cars were: car accident, car crash, and car collision.  I asked Wikipedia and typed "define: _____" into Google a few times, and here's what I've decided:

• I was definitely in a car accident.  Very few people intentionally move their cars into the path of other cars, and I am not one of those people, so this is not surprising.
• I was also in a car collision, because "the scientific use of the word "collision" implies nothing about the magnitude of the forces." If you've ever bumped into a wall- that's a collision. If you've ever walked into a door- that's a collision. My car getting bumped by another car- collision. 
• According to Wikipedia, I was also in a traffic collision, the page to which "car crash" redirects. Dictionaries here are divided: by Merriam-Webster I would say I was not in a crash, and by Dictionary.com, WordReference and Oxford I would say I was in a crash (I assume we can say the collision was "violent.") Cambridge could go either way depending on whether or not it was a serious accident, but I'm certainly not being serious about it right now, so probably not. 

FINAL VERDICT:
car accident- yes!
car collision- yes!
car crash- probably!

In case you're wondering- there was no damage to either car and all parties involved were unharmed. But we were in a parking lot, so this isn't all that surprising.

The moral of the story is: if you're backing up, at least look through your rearview mirror or window or something.

Also, dictionaries can make for a very divided jury.
~TheSequenceKitten