> Why is a victim a person but the actor is an inanimate object? They don't say "car hits bike".
The car physically touched the bicyclist, hence "car hits cyclist". The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist, hence "driver hits cyclist" is inaccurate. "Car hits bicycle" is accurate but not the most relevant fact to report (unless nobody was riding it at the time?).
I'm not sure why this point has not been discussed in this thread. Maybe my understanding of English is insufficiently advanced, but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another, not that the car crashed into the person riding a bicycle (although this can generally be inferred from the context).
> The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist.
A headline would be used even if the car did physically touch the cyclist but hit the bike and knocked the off.
Also, we don't have headlines that say "bullet shoots child", because the person shooting the gun did not physically touch the child. In some of these cases, the car is the lethal weapon, the agency of person driving the car matters.
> but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another
"hits" can mean "impacted" or "run into", so it's accurate here even though it's not a punch.
The car physically touched the bicyclist, hence "car hits cyclist". The driver did not physically touch the bicyclist, hence "driver hits cyclist" is inaccurate. "Car hits bicycle" is accurate but not the most relevant fact to report (unless nobody was riding it at the time?).
I'm not sure why this point has not been discussed in this thread. Maybe my understanding of English is insufficiently advanced, but "driver hits cyclist" literally implies to me that one person punched another, not that the car crashed into the person riding a bicycle (although this can generally be inferred from the context).