Accident analysis
process to determine the cause or causes of an accident or series of accidents so as to prevent further incidents of a similar kind
Accident analysis is a process carried out in order to determine the cause or causes of an accident (that can result in single or multiple outcomes) so as to prevent further accidents of a similar kind. It is part of accident investigation or incident investigation . These analyses may be performed by a range of experts, including forensic scientists, forensic engineers or health and safety advisers. Accident investigators, particularly those in the aircraft industry, are colloquially known as "tin-kickers". Health and safety and patient safety professionals prefer using the term "incident" in place of the term "accident". Its retrospective nature means that accident analysis is primarily an exercise of directed explanation; conducted using the theories or methods the analyst has to hand, which directs the way in which the events, aspects, or features of accident phenomena are highlighted and explained. These analyses are also invaluable in determining ways to prevent future incidents from occurring. They provide good insight by determining root causes, into what failures occurred that led to the incident.
Sequence
Accident analysis is generally performed in four key steps. OSHA combines the last two steps into a singular final step of preparing and issuing a report.
“Accident analysis” enters the record as process to determine the cause or causes of an accident or series of accidents so as to prevent further incidents of a similar kind. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Accident, analysis and process can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2493120. The Library of Congress control number is sh85000370. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Accident analysis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.