autocide

[aw-toh-sahyd]

noun

1. suicide by crashing the vehicle one is driving.

Word History and Origins

Origin of autocide¹

First recorded in 1965–70; auto- ² + -cide

Example Sentences

And yet, his work has an undertone of resilience, if not outright hope, as reflected in his short poem “Autocide”:

Read more on New York Times

Guardrails may prevent the occasional drunk from driving into a ravine, but they obviously don’t stop a significant portion of the population from committing autocide.

Read more on Salon

Though circumstantial evidence is strong, proving that autocide actually does occur has been difficult.

Read more on Time Magazine Archive

No one can know for sure, but more and more police and traffic experts suspect that "autocide," as one expert calls it, is an important cause of traffic deaths.

Read more on Time Magazine Archive

Though all auto deaths have increased by 32% in the past ten years, single-car fatalities that result from collisions with fixed objects�the most likely form of autocide �have jumped 56%.

Read more on Time Magazine Archive