Rubbernecking

Common card · No. 333393

Rubbernecking is a term primarily used to refer to bystanders stopping previous activity to stare at accidents. More generally, it can refer to anyone staring at an object of everyday interest compulsively. The term rubbernecking derives from the neck's appearance while trying to get a better view, that is, craning one's neck. Rubberneck is associated with morbid curiosity. It is often the cause of traffic jams, sometimes referred to as "gapers' block" or "gapers' delay", as drivers slow down to see what happened in a crash. Rubberneck is considered as of 2007 unconventional English or slang.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Wikimedia-User Jivee Blau, CC BY-SA 3.0