Or a misplaced modifier? Or a dangling participle, as they are sometimes called? More to the point, who cares?

Let’s start with an example of a dangling participle: “turning the corner, the sun came out”. We can work out what it means but it’s not good grammar because it implies that the sun turned the corner. So it’s better to say: “as I turned the corner, the sun came out.” By adding the subject “I” to the first part of the sentence, it’s now clear who/what was doing the “turning” and who/what was doing the “coming out”.