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For alternate meanings, see: Accident (fallacy), Accident (philosophy), and Car accidents.

A railing accidentally collapses at a college football game, spilling fans onto the sidelines

Train wreck at Montparnasse in 1895

An accident is an event that occurs unexpectedly and unintentionally. Physical examples include unintended collisions or falls, being injured by touching something sharp, hot, or electric, or ingesting poison. Non-physical examples are unintentionally revealing a secret or otherwise saying something incorrectly, forgetting an appointment, etc.

50,425 people were killed in accidents (not including car accidents) in the U.S. in 1995, which is 19 people in 100,000.

Often, accidents are investigated so that we can learn how to avoid them in the future. This is sometimes called root cause analysis, but does not generally apply to accidents that cannot be predicted with any certainty. For example, a root cause of a purely random incident may never be identified, and thus future similar accidents remain "accidental."

The informal term "freak accident" may refer to an unfortunate event that may seem exceedingly unlikely to happen by chance. This term may be used to imply doubts about whether the event actually was an accident.

[edit] See also

• Accident prevention
• Accident proness
• Aircraft
  • Air safety
  • Accidents and incidents in aviation
  • List of aircraft accidents
• Aisles: Safety and regulatory considerations
• Bicycle
  • Bike accident
  • Bicycle safety
• Car
  • Car accident
  • Car safety
• Disasters
• Driving under the influence
• Hazardous materials
• Hazards
• Home accidents
• Injuries
• Industrial accidents
• Pedestrian accidents
• Risk management
• Road safety
• Sailing ship
  • Sailing ship accidents
• Safety
• Safety engineering
  • fail-safe
  • fail-secure
  • Poka-yoke
• Swiss Cheese model
• Tram accident
• Transport accidents
• Warning labels
• Warnings
• Work accident
• Workplace safety
  • Material safety data sheet
  • Protective clothing
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Criticality accident
• Accident Analysis

[edit] External links

• Community database on Accidents on the Roads in Europe (CARE)
• GotSafety (Safety Tips and Information)

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at [1]}} Accident]]. The list of authors can be seen in the [2]|action=history}} page history]. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.