Accident

For other uses, see Accident (disambiguation).

A railing accident at a college football game, spilling fans onto the side lines

An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence.

Experts in the field of injury prevention avoid use of the term 'accident' to describe events that cause injury in an attempt to highlight the predictable and preventable nature of most injuries. Such incidents are viewed from the perspective of epidemiology - predictable and preventable. Preferred words are more descriptive of the event itself, rather than of its unintended nature (e.g., collision, drowning, fall, etc.)

Accidents of particularly common types (crashing of automobiles, events causing fire, etc.) are investigated to identify how to avoid them in the future. This is sometimes called root cause analysis, but does not generally apply to accidents that cannot be deterministically predicted. A root cause of an uncommon and purely random accident may never be identified, and thus future similar accidents remain "accidental."

Types

Physical and non-physical

Physical examples of accidents include unintended collisions or falls, being injured by touching something sharp, hot, or electrical, or ingesting poison. Non-physical examples are unintentionally revealing a secret or otherwise saying something incorrectly, forgetting an appointment, etc.

By activity

• Accidents during the execution of work or arising out of it are called work accidents.
• In contrast, leisure-related accidents are mainly sports injuries.

By vehicle

• Bike accident
• Tram accident
• Traffic collision
• Sailing ship accidents

Most common causes

See also: List of preventable causes of death

Incidence of accidents, sorted by activity (in Denmark in 2002).

For physical traumas or injuries leading to hospital discharge, most common causes are traffic accidents and falls

Further information: Physical trauma#Common causes

See also

• Injury
• The Safety Institute of America, LLC (www.safetyinstituteofamerica.com)
• Accident-proneness
• Air safety
  • Aviation accidents and incidents
• Aisles: Safety and regulatory considerations
• Bike
  • Bicycle safety
• Car
  • Automobile safety
  • Traffic collision
• Explosives safety
• List of rail accidents
  • List of train accidents by death toll
• Nuclear and radiation accidents
• Risk management
• Sailing ship
  • Sailing ship accidents
• Safety
• Safety engineering
  • Fail-safe
  • Poka-yoke
• Human error model
  • [Jaccident - the official term for numerous consecutive successful fails.]
  • [n. on 10, March 2011 the official term has been changed to Classident, the definition remains intact.]
• Tram accident
• Workplace safety
  • Material safety data sheet
  • Personal protective equipment
  • Occupational safety and health
  • Criticality accident
• Accident analysis

External links