Accident

Traffic collisions often result in injury, disability, death, and property damage as well as financial costs to both society and the individuals involved. Road transport is the most dangerous situation people deal with daily, but casualty figures from such incidents attract less media attention than other, less frequent types of tragedy.

A number of factors contribute to the risk of collisions, including vehicle design, speed of operation, road design, weather, road environment, driving skills, impairment due to alcohol or drugs, and behavior, notably aggressive driving, distracted driving, speeding, and street racing.

In 2013, 54 million people worldwide sustained injuries from traffic collisions. This resulted in 1.4 million deaths in 2013, up from 1.1 million deaths in 1990. About 68,000 of these occurred in children less than five years old.

Traffic collisions can be classified by general types. Types of collisions include head-on, road departure, rear-end, side collisions, and rollovers.

Many different terms are commonly used to describe vehicle collisions. Other common terms include auto accident, car accident, car crash, car smash, car wreck, motor vehicle collision (MVC), personal injury collision (PIC), road accident, road traffic accident (RTA), road traffic collision (RTC), and road traffic incident (RTI), as well as more unofficial terms including smash-up, pile-up, and a fender bender.

Most traffic collisions are the result of driving under the influence, excessive speed, distractions such as mobile phones, or other risky behavior.

Historically, in the United States, the use of terms other than “accidents” had been criticized for holding back safety improvements, based on the idea that a culture of blame may discourage the involved parties from fully disclosing the facts, and thus frustrate attempts to address the real root causes.

*Content from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision