45 American students watched a video clip of a car accident in lab conditions. They got a questionnaire with questions on it saying 'how fast were the cars going when they x each other. The x was replaced with one of five critical verbs: collided, bumped, hit, smashed and connected. The critical verb influenced the estimated speed the students predicted. Higher speeds was estimated for words like 'smashed' compared to 'contacted' which estimated lower speeds.