Very minor confusion with と並んで sample sentence

Okay so, my instinct is that this isn’t a typo since it’s one of the sentences that’s read out loud but I’m really caught up on the part of the sentence that goes 交通事故の原因で. I don’t exactly know why, I think it’s because the first half of the sentence reads (overly literally) to me as “As for distracted driving with the cause of accidents,” and it just doesn’t feel quite right, I found myself expecting には to follow 原因 in this sentence.

I ended up looking up の原因で and I kinda struggled to find any example sentences using this phrase exactly as-is. I know that, when describing something, の can sometimes “replace” が, but typically example sentences would say either “[incident]の原因は” or “[source]が原因で” while this sentence instead is “[incident]の原因で.” Anyway, not a big deal, if this is just how 原因 is sometimes used in Japanese then like whatever, but I’m definitely stuck in the “what is going onnnn here” frame of mind right now.

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Think about で as the method by which traffic accidents happen:

“As for traffic accidents caused by careless driving…”

Does that help?

The full literal sentence would be:

“As for traffic accidents caused by careless driving, alongside speeding violations, it is considered number one.”

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This feels different to how で is typically used though? See this for example:
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They died by wound(s).
Note how the cause comes first.

Anyway, rattling through some extra information on で actually helped me figure this out:

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Wherein で is used to say “among.”

“Among causes of traffic accidents, distracted driving, along with speeding, are the number one cause.” I can vibe with that a little better.

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Oops! Of course, you are correct. I thought about it backwards.

So what makes this confusing is that typically (at least the full way to write it) you’d have (の)中で or (の)内で. As in:

交通事故の中で不注意運転は…

Makes sense now. Thanks for correcting me :blush:.

The translation would now be:

“Among causes for traffic accident, careless driving, alongside speeding violations, have become (the) number one (reason).”

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