It also drives me crazy that it's always the vehicle that hits or kills the pedestrian, cyclist, etc and not the DRIVER… I think a headline like this one "Pedestrian killed by dump truck in Lower Queen Anne identified" makes as much sense as this would "Gun shoots 19-year-old man in South Seattle after robbery" (the real headline was "19-year-old man shot in South Seattle after robbery")
or "Ax kills 100-year old New Jersey man's sleeping wife, then knife kills him" (real headline "100-year-old New Jersey man used ax to kill sleeping wife, then killed himself with knife"), but we seem to have no problems at all divorcing the user from the tool in the case of a motor vehicle.. nearly always it's the vehicle called out in the headline and not the driver, unless the driver was drunk, then it usually does say drunk driver kills - maybe we have MADD to thank for that change of viewpoint.