Accident

“ Accident has liberated us from trammels that still fetter you. We are like a vehicle on the top of a hill, which, the moment it is pushed beyond the point of resistance, rolls down of itself, without the aid of horses. ”

“ What we call an accident, the fall of a brick or a stone, the upsetting of a vehicle, anything however trivial or seemingly improbable, may summon us away when we least expect it: ‘In the midst of life we are in death,’ and that death I may meet by staying in this country, which I might have avoided by going on this expedition. ”

“ In the excitement of a railroad accident the frightened passenger does not feel the bruising and pain which he otherwise would suffer, nor hear the shrieks of his fellow passengers nor perceive but a small part of what is occurring about him, but driven only by the intensely motivating idea of escape from danger he struggles for safety. ”

“ Accident stories of course have many other possible features; newspapers report many accidents in which no one is killed. In that case some other element gives the story news value and that element must be played up as the feature. Perhaps it is the manner in which the accident happened or the manner in which a person was killed or injured, as in an automobile accident. The cause of the accident may be the most interesting part of the story: train-wreckers or a broken rail in a railroad wreck, or the cause of an explosion. ”

“ My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so. ”

“ Thus, in two important respects, the accident we had so greatly dreaded proved to be a benefit rather than an injury; it had opened to us a supply of provisions which we could not have exhausted, using it moderately, in a month; and it had greatly contributed to our comfort as regards position, we being much more at ease, and in infinitely less danger, than before. ”

“ A man meets with an accident—he is mortally wounded in battle—crushed by a railway accident—burnt in a fire—all but drowned in water—sick of a fatal malady lingering with vain hopes and vainer love of life—the marked victim of consumption—these all have their immediate and most excruciating tortures benumbed or alleviated by the skill of the physician ”

“ Fancy this great man, in perplexity from some unexpected accident how to supply the loss of a friend, vacating one of these seats, with an individual, who by no means must be inferior to his predecessor in obsequious attention to his patron’s political interests, his intentions, and injunctions. Accident, the veriest accident, might introduce the practitioner of the law to huggery of another kind.—What think you now, good people? ”

“ Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one seat, smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same about each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. ”

“ "You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn't to drive at all."
"I am careful."
"No, you're not."
"Well, other people are," she said lightly.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident." ”

“ He contents himself with observing that the shocking accident of the day before, when a young man about to be married had been run over in the course and cut to pieces by the chariot wheels, was a damning proof of the wild folly and wickedness of these spectacles. ”

“ Accidents.—Accident stories may be anything from a sprained ankle to a disastrous railroad wreck, but they all depend upon one element for their interest. They are all printed because people in general are interested in the injuries and deaths of other people—physical calamity is the common ground in all these stories. ”

“ They're known as the 'accident prone.' It may be based on nothing but superstition, but you'd have a hard time convincing an experienced insurance-policy salesman of that.
"Some people seem to have a rare gift for making accidents happen, of drawing down the lightning upon themselves. They become seriously injured time and time again. ”

“ How an accident may be understood to be in its subject. 3. When an accident is said to be in a body, it is not so to be understood, as if any thing were contained in that body; as if, for example, redness were in blood, in the same manner, as blood is in a bloody cloth, that is, as a part in the whole; for so, an accident would be a body also. But, as magnitude, or rest, or motion, is in that which is great, or which resteth, or which is moved, (which, how it is to be understood, every man understands) so also, it is to be understood, that every other accident is in its subject. ”

“ Sometimes there is a moving accident, too. Yesterday, for example, hearing a warning call and a crash, I was at the window in time to see an omnibus and a small wagon inextricably mixed, and to watch with what celerity a crowd can assemble. ”

“ Is the Creator of all to be limited and only his creature unlimited? How often, in the midst of a great accident, has not some mind suggested a redress totally at variance with the rules by which the accident was produced, creating a surprise to usual circumstances, and checking the catastrophe before it could recover its equanimity and prearranged and understood mode of conduct! ”

“ The accident that turns one into the road is only the means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends. Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. ”

“ And who has not remarked that when an unlooked-for accident sets it a-jarring, by breaking up some minor wheel or axis, there follows a whole series of disasters—pressing the one upon the other, with stroke after stroke. ”

“ From these classifications of accidents it will be at once apparent that the general notion of accident, as a dependent mode of being, superadded to the essence of a substance and in some way determining the latter, is realized in widely different and merely analogical ways in the different ultimate classes of accidents. ”

“ Get Cash instead of Sympathy
If you met with an accident in your home, on the street, or road, in the field, or on your job—will your income continue? Remember, few escape without accident—and none of us can tell what to-morrow holds for us. While you are reading this warning, somewhere some ghastly tragedy is taking its toll of human life or limb, some flood or fire, some automobile or train disaster. ”

“ An accident which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance, of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense impression on the imagination of the crowd. ”

“ Take the word accident, for example. “An injury may be and often is, the result of an accident; but injury and accident are two words far from identical in meaning.” [4] That is true; yet we are justified by good usage in speaking of certain unpleasant and unfortunate occurrences, causing injury by chance, as accidents.
“Anticipate, ‘to take beforehand, ...to take first possession of, or to take before the proper time,’ is not a synonym of expect, foresee. A man may anticipate his sweetheart in fulfilling some dear wish of hers, even before she makes known her desire ”

“ You might walk about the streets for a week and never see a serious accident, or even an accident at all, and yet, you see, here they come all day long—a stream of people damaged or killed in the machine. ”

“ An accident, that great ally of able men, came to my help. And I wish to call your especial attention, gentlemen experts, to this detail: Precisely an accident, i. e., something external, not depending upon me, served as the basis and motive for what followed. In a newspaper I stumbled upon an item concerning a cashier, or some clerk or other, (the clipping is probably at my home or in the district attorney's office) , who simulated a fit of epilepsy and made a pretense of having lost money during the attack—actually, of course, having stolen it. ”

“ The number of persons who, every day, meet with an accidental death, all over the world, is very considerable. But how can we bring a tile onto the head of an important character, or fling him under the wheels of a vehicle in the middle of a story, under the pretext that accident must have its due? ”

“ And not unfrequently do accidents befall such an one, and he hurts himself grievously; hence come those accidents which we may call indefinite, for of this kind of accident there is often no definite cause, for the cause of it is casual, and that is indefinite. ”

“ In this chapter, however, accident stories will be taken to include fires, street-car smash-ups, railroad wrecks, automobile collisions, runaways, explosions, mine disasters, strokes of lightning, drownings, floods, storms, shipwrecks, etc. In the list of crime will be placed murders, assaults, suicides, suspicious deaths, robberies, embezzlements, arson, etc. Of the accident class, the method of writing a fire story may be taken as a type for the whole group. ”

“ "Things happen to people by accident," she used to say. ”

“ The illusion of the story, that made it true to life, was destroyed, because of giving first an impression of cautious driving, and then of an accident that would only have occurred as a result of terror or recklessness. ”

“ A small fire story of this type is found on p. 19; a humorous feature story of an accident is that of the “Child in a Runaway” (p. 25) ; and a pathetic human interest story is that of the “Boy Killed by Car” (p. 25) .
Purpose. Stories of fires and accidents, particularly when such occurrences result in fatalities, may be written so as to be either constructive or destructive in their influence upon readers. ”

“ To establish an “act of God” defense based on illness producing a loss of consciousness, the driver must show that the loss of consciousness produced the accident without any contributing negligence on the part of the driver. ”

“ If, like the good Samaritan’s friend, I should chance to fall among thieves, who should strip me of my raiment, wound me, and depart leaving me dead, that, probably, would be considered a death by violent and accidental means, for Judge Withey, of Michigan, has laid it down that an accident is any event which takes place without the foresight or expectation of the person, acted upon or affected by the event. ”

“ Accident and Crime Stories.—Accident and crime stories are grouped together because they are handled alike and because they differ from each other only in point of view, or in the fact that in the one some one is guilty of lawbreaking, while in the other the participants are merely unfortunate. ”

“ It is to draw attention to another fact, and an analogy. Let us take a man in good health, whose brain and mental functions are normal. Let this man be all but killed in a railroad accident. In the jar and shock of the collision this man was thrown (let us say) against an iron post, and his head badly cut and bruised. He was knocked insensible, and it was several hours before he returned to the first dim consciousness of his surroundings. ”

“ I was smoking my pipe one day, near an old stone quarry at the entrance to our village, when a carriage accident happened, which gave a new turn, as it were, to my lot in life. It was an accident of the commonest kind—not worth mentioning at any length. A lady driving herself ”

“ Mind, I’m not confessin’ anything, but I leave it to your judgment if that looks just like an accident. There wasn’t a chance in the world of his being killed, with a guy hidden in the back of the car to stop him if he got to goin’ too fast with his wheel loosened up. ”

“ He smote his brow and took out his tablets; he deplored the accident of which I complained, and promised to look straight into it. An accident it could only have been, the result of a particular pressure, a congestion of work. ”

“ Since the unintended is often the undesirable, accident tends to signify some calamity or disaster, unless the contrary is expressed, as when we say a fortunate or happy accident. An adventure is that which may turn out ill, a misadventure that which does turn out ill. A slight disturbing accident is a mishap. ”

“ Soon after their departure we had an accident; for no long journey in America would be complete without one. A coupling iron broke; and, after leaving the last car behind us, we waited for it to come up, which it did, with a crash that knocked every one forward on their faces, and caused several old ladies to screech dismally. Hats flew off, bonnets were flattened, the stove skipped, the lamps fell down, the water jar turned a somersault, and the wheel just over which I sat received some damage. ”

“ In stepping into a railway carriage, do you not think of the risks you may run? An accident may happen to anybody, though every possible security and guarantee may be given that no accident shall occur. ”

“ There were travelling incidents and accidents, and straits for money, and mishaps and arrests, and stories of steeple-chases and balls all mixed up together, and recounted so very much in the same spirit as to show how very little shadow mere misadventure could throw across the sunshine of their every-day life. ”

“ "And this accident came about . . . ?"
"Through nature's unpredictability not man's incapacity. No errors were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can't prevent a loss of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one can withstand the laws of nature." ”

“ Accidents frequently prove fatal, merely because proper means are not used to counteract their effects, 601No person ought to be looked upon as killed by any accident, unless where the structure of the heart, brain, or some organ necessary to life, is evidently destroyed. ”

“ In a long series of events of the same kind, the mere chances of accident sometimes offer these curious veins of good or bad fortune, which many persons do not hesitate to attribute to a kind of fatality. ”

“ In almost every case it is possible to avoid a collision by going at a slow pace, or lying to during a fog, but the import of the words “inevitable accident” is this, where a man is pursuing his lawful vocation in a lawful manner, and something occurs which no ordinary caution could prevent. ”