accident vs. incident

Accident is used to describe things that happen unintentionally, in other words, accidentally. A typical example is a traffic accident--the driver does not intend to cause an accident. Crimes cannot be described as accidents because they are intended by the criminal; in the case of a robbery, for example, the robber intends to steal something; he or she does not accidentally steal it. Incident has a wider meaning and can be used both for accidents and for intentional actions such as crimes.

Here are some examples from data drawn from the Bank of English corpus created by COBUILD at Birmingham University.

1. The Iraqi ambassador to France was immediately summoned to the French foreign office and strong protest delivered. A spokesman said that, 'The incident was serious violation of the Vienna Convention. It was a new and intolerable attack on international law.' He called for the immediate freeing of the four men and their return ...

2. The case arose after an incident in January, when Ostashvili and a group of supporters burst into a meeting of writers in central Moscow and started eschewing anti-semitic threats.
   NOTE:Accident could not replace incident in either (a) or (b) because these actions are intentional.

3. A gas explosion and fire has ripped through a coal mine in Czechoslovakia, killing at least 22 people. Officials say at least eight others are missing. The incident occurred yesterday afternoon at a mine in Karvina near the Polish border. Reason for the explosion is not known.
   NOTE: If the cause was known in (c), and if the cause of the explosion was found to an accident or natural forces, accident could be used here. But since the cause is not known, incident is better because it leaves open the possiblity that someone caused the explosion (with a bomb or something.)

4. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, was hospitalized in Moscow this morning after his car was involved in an accident. An aide says Yeltsin was not hurt, but was taken to the hospital for a checkup.

5. Officials say it's unlikely that yesterday's collision was caused by the same factors as a similar 1987 crash at Back Bay Station. That earlier accident was blamed on a faulty signal. National Transportation Safety Board officials say investigators have not ruled anything out.