Using ‘accident’ avoids a serious investigation of the event, and it hampers efforts to alter unsafe environments or conditions in which children are present,” wrote Lee in an open-access commentary recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Agromedicine. “Child Farm Injuries are Never ‘Accidents,’” a commentary by Barbara Lee, is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/1059924X.2024.2311050.

Child injuries on farms are not ‘accidents’

Long-time researcher challenges traditional notions of incident reporting 

Headlines such as, “Toddler killed in tractor accident,” or, “Boy dies in farm accident,” grab our attention and sympathy, but they also prevent us from addressing the root causes of those tragedies.

An ‘accident’ suggests that the situation could not have been anticipated or prevented. 

Instead of “accident,” our center recommends the word “incident,” or a word describing what happened, such as “crash,” “explosion,” or “fall.”

The poster was accepted and presented at the 2024 International Society of Agricultural Safety and Health Annual Conference. 

Key findings show

  • In a sample of 719 Ag Injury News reports involving child/youth injuries and fatalities from 2016 to 2022, 87% used the word “accident” in the article headline or at least once in the article narrative
  • The term “accident” was used far less frequently (56%) in 4,246 reports covering adult injuries during the same time period
  • agricultural media professionals revealed that they believe child deaths on farms are reported differently than urban child deaths (e.g., in hot cars), and most would consider replacing “accident” with alternate terms such as “incident” or “rollover”
  • Findings suggest there is potential to influence a shift away from reporting child agricultural injuries/fatalities as “accidents”



Visit again in September for updates on this project. 

To ask questions or discuss this project contact us at nccrahs@marshfieldresearch.org.