Accident waiting to happen

Accident waiting to happen

“Accident waiting to happen.” This is an expression that turns a normal sentence on its head.

“Happen” is the verb we often use with “accident.” You might say, “An accident happened on the way to work—I spilled my coffee all over my pants in the car.”

With the expression, “accident waiting to happen,” we turn that around. And we use this expression to describe a dangerous or risky situation. With this expression, we’re foreshadowing, we’re predicting an accident in the future.

In today’s main story, we talked about the FSO Safer, an oil storage vessel moored off the coast of Yemen . A rebel group took control of the coast, and therefore of the Safer. They then let it sit, abandoned, while it rusted and started to break down , posing a tremendous environmental risk.

The rebel group didn’t specifically want an environmental disaster. But for many years, they didn’t appear too worried about the risk, either. They didn’t allow preventative maintenance to be done on the ship. They don’t exactly have the expertise to transfer the oil to somewhere safer. They just let the FSO Safer sit out there in the Red Sea, slowly disintegrating.

The U.N. realized this was an accident waiting to happen. So just to be clear: an accident did not happen. The bad thing didn’t happen. But the U.N. predicted that something bad would happen. It was an easy prediction. Without corrective action, all this oil would spill out into the ocean. There was a high probability of an accident. On Thursday, you’ll learn how an accident was averted.

But we use the phrase, “this is an accident waiting to happen,” we use it when there’s a high probability of an accident, especially a preventable one. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, like with the FSO Safer. But sometimes it does happen.

The “Titan” submersible was an accident waiting to happen, according to almost every expert on deep-sea dives. This is the exploratory ship that a private company took to the site of the Titanic shipwreck. You heard about that in lessons 588 and 589 .

For years, experts in the field warned the company, OceanGate, and its founder, Stockton Rush, that the design was not adequate to dive deep into the ocean. It wasn’t made of strong enough material. The experts said—over and over—for years—to anyone who would listen—they said that this was an accident waiting to happen. They said it was dangerous, risky, and they predicted that something terrible would happen. To tragic effect, they were right.

This is often pessimistic. The person saying this often has little or no chance to really make the situation better. You might say this on the road, if you see a car loaded with too much stuff, and it looks like something is going to fall off the roof. That’s an accident waiting to happen—and you just avoid that car.

Sometimes, though, you can say: “this is an accident waiting to happen” and then you take corrective action. So if you’re at home, and you see one of your kids carrying a plate of food, plus two drinks, and they’re about to go through a doorway, and you can just imagine the whole thing spilling. You can just see it playing out in slow motion in your head.

You can say, “Wait a second. This is an accident waiting to happen. Let me take some of that for you” and you take some of the things your son or daughter is carrying.

You can describe a careless person as an accident waiting to happen. I won’t say his name, but there was a kid in my class growing up. All right, I’ll say his name—his first name was Michael. He just always seemed to be dropping something, getting hurt, breaking something. One time, he stuck a piece of metal into an electrical outlet and burned himself. Yeah—you get the picture. The first time I ever heard this phrase, it was from my mom. She said, about Michael, “that kid is just an accident waiting to happen.”

See you next time!

That’s all for today’s Plain English, lesson number 606. Congratulations on reaching the end of another great lesson. And remember, we’re going to pack some more great learning and fun into our weekly e-mails, so sign up for those by visiting PlainEnglish.com/mail .

We’ll be back on Thursday for lesson 607, where we’ll continue the story of the FSO Safer. See you then.