Injury is No Accident

By definition, an Accident:

• is an act of God
• is a chance occurrence
• is an unavoidable event
• is unpredictable
• is unexplainable
• has no known cause
• is unexpected
• occurs without one’s foresight

Given that 95 per cent of all injuries are the result of predictable circumstances and the causes of injury are well understood, describing injuries as accidents is inappropriate and runs counter to prevention efforts. Consider these scenarios, commonly referred to as accidents:

• an impaired driver strikes and kills a pedestrian
• a factory worker gets an arm caught in unguarded machinery
• an un-helmeted ATV driver falls off the machine and suffers severe brain injury
• recreational fisherman not wearing a lifejacket, falls from the boat and drowns
• an elderly woman trips on a loose area rug and fractures her hip
• a person fails to escape a burning home that had no working smoke detector.

So what’s the message here?

Calling an injury or the event that leads to it an accident, is misleading and inappropriate. Labeling injuries as accidents perpetuates the myth that injuries just happen and suggests there is nothing that can be done to prevent them.

Why does this matter?

As long as people view injuries as accidents, they fail to recognize that they can prevent them. All of us have to recognize that most injuries are preventable and start looking at the risks we face in our every day lives.

By identifying risks, we can begin to take steps that will diminish these risks. For example, reducing the speed we travel on the highway in bad weather, wearing a helmet for wheeled activities, storing household poisons where kids cannot access them, etc.

Nova Scotia Health Promotion and our many stakeholders believe that language is very important when talking about injury. If people believe that most injuries are the result of bad luck or fate (as implied by the word "accident"), the more difficult it will be for us to reduce the number of people who become seriously injured, or die as a result of their injuries. Over time, changing the way people perceive injuries will help our efforts to prevent them. Only when people start to see that injuries are not accidents will we be able to fully engage people in prevention.

Changing language doesn’t blame victims

Not using the word accident doesn’t necessarily imply that the injury is the fault of the victim. For example, when someone is struck down by an impaired driver, it is clearly not the fault of the victim.

The purpose of changing language is to help people understand that injuries are almost always preventable. Changing our language and perception about injuries will help us identify preventable injuries so others do not have to suffer (victims, families, friends, etc).