An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity.

It usually 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 as 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 [edit]
Physical and non-physical [edit]
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 [edit]
Accidents during the execution of work or arising out of it are called work accidents. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 337 million accidents happen on the job each [1] year, resulting, together with occupational diseases, in more than 2.3 million deaths annually. In contrast, leisure-related accidents are mainly sports injuries.

By vehicle [edit]
Bike accidents Tram accidents Traffic collisions Sailing ship accidents

Most common causes [edit]

See also: List of preventable causes of death For physical traumas or injuries leading to hospital discharge, most common causes are traffic accidents and falls. In the case of injuries in the home, a 2005 survey using data from the National Vital Statistics System of the United States National Center for Health Statisticsfound that falls, poisoning, and fire/burn [2] injuries were the most common causes for death. The United States also collects statistically valid injury data (sampled from 100 hospitals) through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System [3] administered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This program was revised in 2000 to

include all injuries rather than just injuries involving products. [4] collected through the National Health Interview Survey.

[3]

Data on emergency room visits is also

Safety is the state of being "safe" (from French sauf), the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable. Safety can also be defined to be the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of risk. This can take the form of being protected from the event or from exposure to something that causes health or economical losses. It can include protection of people or of possessions.

Types of safety
It is important to distinguish between products that meet standards, that are safe, and those that merely feel safe. The highway safety community uses these terms:

Normative safety
Normative safety is when a product or design meets applicable design standards and protection.

Substantive safety
Substantive, or objective safety occurs when the real-world safety history is favorable, whether or not standards are met.

Perceived safety
Perceived, or subjective safety refers to the level of comfort of users. For example, traffic signals are perceived as safe, yet under some circumstances, they can increase traffic crashes at an intersection. [2] Traffic roundabouts have a generally favorable safety record yet often make drivers nervous. Low perceived safety can have costs. For example, after the 9/11/2001 attacks, many people chose to drive rather than fly, despite the fact that, even counting terrorist attacks, flying is safer than driving. Perceived risk discourages people from walking and bicycling for transportation, enjoyment or exercise, [3] even though the health benefits outweigh the risk of injury.

Security
Also called social safety or public safety, security is the risk of harm due to intentional criminal acts such as assault, burglary or vandalism. Because of the moral issues involved, security is of higher importance to many people than substantive safety. For example, a death due to murder is considered worse than a death in a car crash, even though in many countries, traffic deaths are more common than homicides.