Robotics

An autonomous underwater robot saves people from drowning

Many swimming pools in Germany do not have enough trained lifeguards and in many places, this skilled labor shortage is even leading to closures. The solution could be a floating underwater rescue robot, which is intended ...

Energy & Green Tech

New highly radioactive particles found in Fukushima

The 10 year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident occurs in March. Work just published in the Journal Science of the Total Environment documents new, large (> 300 micrometers), highly radioactive particles ...

Automotive

Smart cruise control steers drivers toward better decisions

Vehicle manufacturers offer smart features such as lane and braking assist to aid drivers in hazardous situations when human reflexes may not be fast enough. But most options only provide immediate benefits to a single vehicle.

Business

LG chairman apologises over gas leak, fire

LG Group chairman Koo Gwang-mo apologised Wednesday over two fatal accidents at LG Chem facilities in the past two weeks, reports said, including a gas leak in India that killed 12 people.

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Accident

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."

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA