Why Colorado Is Starting to Say ‘Crash’ Instead of ‘Accident’

Colorado is officially changing the way it talks about collisions on the road.

Under House Bill 26-1237, which took effect August 12, 2026, roughly 90 sections of Colorado law have been updated to replace or supplement the word “accident” with “crash” or “incident.” With the change, Colorado becomes only the second state in the nation to formally write “crash” into its statutes.

At The O’Sullivan Law Firm, we have been making this distinction for years.

Why? Because “accident” can make a serious collision sound unavoidable. In many cases, it wasn’t.

Consider someone speeding, looking at a phone, driving drunk, or turning without checking for a cyclist or motorcycle.

The driver may not have intended to hurt anyone. But unintentional does not mean unavoidable.

That is why “crash” is usually the better word.

Language Shapes How We Think About Road Safety

CDOT has been encouraging Coloradans to say “crash, not accident” for the same reason: most collisions are preventable.

Calling every collision an accident quietly removes the question of responsibility before anyone has even investigated what happened. “Crash” does not assume someone was negligent. It simply describes the event. It also leaves room for the questions that matter afterward.

Was someone distracted? Impaired? Did a driver fail to yield? Could a safer decision have prevented someone from being injured or killed?

We think about those questions after every crash.

Old Habits Will Be Hard to Break

Will everybody in Colorado suddenly stop saying “car accident”?

Probably not.

The phrase is deeply embedded in everyday speech. Insurance companies use it. News reports use it. People type it into Google thousands of times every day. We all catch ourselves saying it occasionally.

The goal is not to correct someone who uses the wrong word. It is to change how we think about what happened. When someone is seriously injured on the road, we should not start with the assumption that it was simply an accident. We should find out why.

Colorado law is finally starting to reflect that distinction.

We’re glad to see it.