An event where a vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, or stationary object, resulting in property damage, injury, or death. In traffic engineering and safety enforcement, the term is actively discouraged because it implies the event was unavoidable or an act of fate. Professionals prefer terms like crash, collision, or incident to reflect that human error or design flaws are usually the root cause.
Heard on the job
Dispatch, we've a major accident blocking the two right lanes on I-95 southbound.
Insider tip
Safety professionals and traffic engineers strongly prefer the word "crash" over "accident" to emphasize that these events are preventable.
Also heard as
- crash
- collision
- incident