# There was a car accident happening



## sunyaer

<< This text was the opening of another thread, Talk about whether or not he was safe in the accident from which this has been split >>

"There was a car accident happening a while ago involving one of our employees. We haven't received any news from the site, and we are talking about whether or not he was safe in the accident."

<< Deleted - not relevant to this thread >>


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## Cenzontle

The first strange thing I see in this sentence is "*There was* a car accident *happening*"—it sounds like an event in progress, 
and as if the observer is going to describe the development of the accident, from millisecond to millisecond.  
I would say instead "There was a car accident *that happened* a while ago..." 
or better yet, delete the "happen" verb and just say "There was a car accident a while ago..."

<< Deleted - not relevant to this thread >>


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## sunyaer

Cenzontle said:


> The first strange thing I see in this sentence is "*There was* a car accident *happening*"—it sounds like an event in progress,
> and as if the observer is going to describe the development of the accident, from millisecond to millisecond.
> I would say instead "There was a car accident *that happened* a while ago..."
> or better yet, delete the "happen" verb and just say "There was a car accident a while ago..."



Assume this is a news break on TV, the anouncer might say something like this:

"There was a car accident happening a while ago in the downtown area, in which a trailer ran over a mini car and just crashed it. Let's take a look at this video."

Does this sound natural with the word "happening"?


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## Cenzontle

My picture of an "accident happening" is something like this:
"Ten minutes ago we received a report that there was a multi-car pile-up *developing *in a foggy stretch of Highway 57. 
[One vehicle stopped in the fog; another one crashed into it from behind, and so on, again and again.]
At that time, 85 cars were involved. Let's go now to our live mini-camera on the scene and watch the accident happening" [we assume that the accident is still going on].
Not a pretty sight!  Crash!  Crash! Crash!


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## sunyaer

Cenzontle said:


> My picture of an "accident happening" is something like this:
> "Ten minutes ago we received a report that there was a multi-car pile-up *developing *in a foggy stretch of Highway 57.
> [One vehicle stopped in the fog; another one crashed into it from behind, and so on, again and again.]
> At that time, 85 cars were involved. Let's go now to our live mini-camera on the scene and watch the accident happening" [we assume that the accident is still going on].
> Not a pretty sight!  Crash!  Crash! Crash!



I disagree, but I am very curious to know why native speakers would understand it this way. Do you agree that " a car accident was happening a while ago on highway 401" is a perfect sentence? I guess you would. While, "there was a car accident happening a while ago on highway 401" is nothing different than the previous sentence. A gerund does not have to be "still going on", however, it does indicate a ongoing action, which may be at present or in the past.


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## entangledbank

<~> A car accident is a very brief event which happens, but is not extended in time enough to be happening. Looking out of the window and seeing something, you would say 'there's a robbery happening in the street', but not 'there's a car accident happening in the street'. A car accident just goes _screech! crash!_ and that's it, it's now happened almost as soon as you notice it. If it's extended, like multiple cars piling into each other on a highway, you call it a pile-up or something else.

<< Deleted - not relevant to this thread >>


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## sunyaer

entangledbank said:


> but not 'there's a car accident happening in the street'. A car accident just goes _screech! crash!_ and that's it, it's now happened almost as soon as you notice it. If it's extended, like multiple cars piling into each other on a highway, you call it a pile-up or something else.



This explanation makes sense. However, could we say "there was a car accident happening a while ago, in which a car was running into another head on head. I saw it happening and it was really scary"?


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## Myridon

sunyaer said:


> This explanation makes sense. However, could we say "there was a car accident happening a while ago, in which a car was running into another head on head. I saw it happening and it was really scary"?


No. We would not say that.  "There was a car accident (which happened) a while ago, in which a car ran into another car head on. I saw it happen and it was really scary."


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## sunyaer

Myridon said:


> No. We would not say that.  "There was a car accident (which happened) a while ago, in which a car ran into another car head on. I saw it happen and it was really scary."



Could we say "there was a robbery happening in the street a while ago. I saw it happening and it was really scary."?


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## Cenzontle

> Could we say "there was a robbery happening in the street a while ago. I saw it happening and it was really scary."?


I can imagine it.  BUT to me it implies that you are going to tell more about events that happened, things you did, *during the robbery*.
The "-ing" forms suggest that you haven't "closed the book" on the robbery, in your story.
If the robbery was finished before you could call the police or go out and help the victim, 
then there is no reason, grammatically, to keep it "happen*ing*", to keep it "open" for simultaneous events.


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## sunyaer

Cenzontle said:


> I can imagine it.  BUT to me it implies that you are going to tell more about events that happened, things you did, *during the robbery*.



That's exactly a story telling, like my daughter would do. She would describe the scene and tell me what happened, like playing a movie for me if I didn't see it. She would add a lot of details in her description, such as how the robber pointed the gun at the store owner.


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## Parla

> Assume this is a news break on TV, the announcer might say something like this:
> 
> "There was a car accident happening a while ago in the downtown area . . .



No. The reporter would say, "There was a bad accident . . . " (a specific time interval would be given, not "a while", but that's another issue). The "*-ing*" ending denotes something that continues over a period of time. The reporter might begin, "As people were driv*ing* home from work on Happy Highway, . . . ".


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## sunyaer

sunyaer said:


> Could we say "there was a robbery happening in the street a while ago. I saw it happening and it was really scary."?





Cenzontle said:


> I can imagine it.  BUT to me it implies that you are going to tell more about events that happened, things you did, *during the robbery*.
> The "-ing" forms suggest that you haven't "closed the book" on the robbery, in your story.
> If the robbery was finished before you could call the police or go out and help the victim,
> then there is no reason, grammatically, to keep it "happen*ing*", to keep it "open" for simultaneous events.



Do we use the progressive "-ing" form of the verb "happening" to describe a robbery?


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## JulianStuart

sunyaer said:


> Do we use the progressive "-ing" form of the verb "happening" to describe a robbery?



Robberies can take a while.  So they can be "in progress" and we _can_ use the continuous form.  The accident is like someone falling down or from a building.  It happens so quickly that we don't consider it as having a "duration" and therefore don't (usually) use the continuous form.

Of course, a robbery can be instantaneous, like a purse-snatching and an accident can continue to pile up cars in the fog so the context/specifics will need to be considered.


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## sdgraham

On the other hand, we don't generally use "happening" in connection with robberies, probably because robberies just don't "happen" the way floods and thunderstorms "happen," i.e. a random or chance event.

Robberies are perpetrated by individuals on purpose.

Note JulianStuart's "in progress" above.

Idiomatically, there are many activities we just don't use "happening" with.

For example, we would not say a bath or shower is "happening," regardless of how long you stay under the shower or soak in the tub.

It's not a matter of tense, however.


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## sunyaer

entangledbank said:


> ....
> Looking out of the window and seeing something, you would say 'there's a robbery happening in the street', ...





sdgraham said:


> On the other hand, we don't generally use "happening" in connection with robberies, probably because robberies just don't "happen" the way floods and thunderstorms "happen," i.e. a random or chance event.
> 
> Robberies are perpetrated by individuals on purpose.
> 
> ...



Conflicting opinions?

What about the phrase "going on"? or a better verb / phrase?

"I saw it going on / taking place and it was really scary"?


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## WildWest

Although I have opened a thread about it and still don't know how these kinds of things work, I come up with a suggestion. How about this?:

There was a car accident happened.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please. I also wonder if that could be rewritten like this:

There was a happened car accident.

Note that the second sounds a little bit strange to me although I don't know why. I'm waiting for being enlightened. Thanks.


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## sunyaer

WildWest said:


> Although I have opened a thread about it and still don't know how these kinds of things work, I come up with a suggestion. How about this?:
> 
> There was a car accident that happened a while ago.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong, please. I also wonder if that could be rewritten like this:
> 
> There was a happened accident.
> 
> Note that the second sounds a little bit strange to me although I don't know why. I'm waiting for being enlightened. Thanks.


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## WildWest

Thanks for correction. In that thread I opened weeks ago, the sentence I asked for help about was this:

"I have a very busy day planned."

I think these two structures look extremely the same. So what should we do to see the difference then? I'm %100 sure that I heard it used somewhere. Thanks in advance.


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## JulianStuart

The structure s_eems_ parallel but the verbs are different.

Something cannot be happened! In the meaning of "occur" it is an intransitive verb (cannot have an object). 
An accident happened.  An accident was happened.

Something can be planned.  Plan is a transitive verb (can have an object).
I planned a meal.  A meal was planned by my friends.


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## WildWest

JulianStuart said:


> The structure s_eems_ parallel but the verbs are different.
> 
> Something cannot be happened! In the meaning of "occur" it is an intransitive verb (cannot have an object).
> An accident happened.  An accident was happened.
> 
> Something can be planned.  Plan is a transitive verb (can have an object).
> I planned a meal.  A meal was planned by my friends.



Thanks for your correction. That makes sense to me. However, it still confuses me that the word "planned" is at the end of that sentence. Considering your explanation, we can say that the word "happened" cannot be put at the end because it's an intransitive verb. I understand a little, but not totally. Besides, of course, what I'm talking about has nothing to do with the other sentence structures. Everything can be different according to their contexts.


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## JamesM

WildWest said:


> Thanks for correction. In that thread I opened weeks ago, the sentence I asked for help about was this:
> 
> "I have a very busy day planned."
> 
> I think these two structures look extremely the same. So what should we do to see the difference then? I'm %100 sure that I heard it used somewhere. Thanks in advance.



(To me, "planned" in this sentence modifies "a busy day".  It is similar to "I have a busy day ahead of me". )

"Planned" is an action that I can perform.  Something can be planned.  "I planned a busy day for myself."  

As JulianStuart said, something cannot be happened.

A busy day is happened. 
A busy day was happened. 
A busy day will be happened. 

Think of it as similar to "occur".  An event can occur but event can't be occurred.  It doesn't make sense in English. "I occurred/happened this event" is nonsense in English.  I can't occur or happen anything.  Something occurs or happens.


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## Packard

Car accidents happen in an instant. It would be a very strange situation where someone would describe an accident "happening" (on-going).

While an explosion could be described by a scientist as a chemical reaction that was happening, to the rest of the world it would be an instantaneous event.

It sounds like the speaker does not know the outcome of the accident. If that is the case then I would suggest:

_Mike was just in an car accident. We have no further information yet._


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## WildWest

JamesM said:


> (To me, "planned" in this sentence modifies "a busy day".  It is similar to "I have a busy day ahead of me". )
> 
> "Planned" is an action that I can perform.  Something can be planned.  "I planned a busy day for myself."
> 
> As JulianStuart said, something cannot be happened.
> 
> A busy day is happened.
> A busy day was happened.
> A busy day will be happened.
> 
> Think of it as similar to "occur".  An event can occur but event can't be occurred.  It doesn't make sense in English. "I occurred/happened this event" is nonsense in English.  I can't occur or happen anything.  Something occurs or happens.



Thanks. I guessed so when I first heard it. So what grammatical term would you use for it? I want to look over the web but don't know what to search. It surely modifies "a busy day", just like the "very", but why is it located at the end of that sentence? I thought it was a past participle or something.



Packard said:


> Car accidents happen in an instant. It would be a very strange situation where someone would describe an accident "happening" (on-going).
> 
> While an explosion could be described by a scientist as a chemical reaction that was happening, to the rest of the world it would be an instantaneous event.
> 
> It sounds like the speaker does not know the outcome of the accident. If that is the case then I would suggest:
> 
> _Mike was just in an car accident. We have no further information yet._



Thank you too for that explanation, of course.


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## JamesM

I believe it is functioning as an adjective, similar to "I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m."   As I understand it, "scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m." is an adjectival phrase modifying "appointment".   "I have a busy day planned" does the same thing with one word, so "planned" is an adjective modifying "day". 

I am happy to be corrected.  I am no grammar expert.


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## estoy_lerniendo

JamesM said:


> I believe it is functioning as an adjective, similar to "I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m."   As I understand it, "scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m." is an adjectival phrase modifying "appointment".   "I have a busy day planned" does the same thing with one word, so "planned" is an adjective modifying "day".
> 
> I am happy to be corrected.  I am no grammar expert.



I'm no Noam Chomsky, but I see it the same way. (I might also point out that "planned" modifies the whole noun phrase "a busy day," but yes, the noun "day" is the central aspect.)


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## Parla

> What about the phrase "going on"? or a better verb / phrase?
> 
> "I saw it going on / taking place and it was really scary"?


I gather that you're still referring to the robbery. We would normally not use that structure for something that happens as quickly as a robbery on the street. We'd say, "I saw it take place." Or in slang terms, "I saw it go down."


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## WildWest

I see it the same way too, but not knowing the grammatical term for it bothers me a lot. 

_"I came prepared" _I think that sentence has the same structure, just like _"We have two apples left"_


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## JamesM

Well, in "I came prepared" I believe prepared is an adverb describing how I came.  In "I have an appointment scheduled" I believe "scheduled" is an adjective that modifies appointment.  

Try looking up adverbial phrases and adjectival phrases.  I think that will lead you in the right direction.


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## sunyaer

JamesM said:


> ... In "I have an appointment scheduled" I believe "scheduled" is an adjective that modifies appointment.
> 
> ...



The discussion seems to be getting a bit off topic. 

"I have an appointment scheduled" is what we call causative structure, meaning that somebody else, such as the receptionist in the office where your appointment is going to take place has communicated with you and scheduled the appointment for you.

"I have a busy day planned" is similar structure. However, your day can not be planned by anyone else, but yourself.


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## JamesM

(I'm fairly sure that neither one of these are causative structures, sunyear, but as you said, we're beginning to drift.)


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## WildWest

As much as it's a little bit going off the topic, I thought it was somewhat similar to your question. I will also look over both adverbial phrases and adjectival phrases, but I'm not so sure if I'll find what I'm looking for. I remember I saw them before and couldn't find it that helpful.


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## wandle

When something happens and we actually watch it taking place, we would still not normally say that we saw it happening. The natural expression would be 'I saw it happen'.

There is a point here which, as sdgraham says, is not about tense: it is about the logic of the word 'happen'. This word focuses on the result, not the process. When we say that something happened, we are saying what the outcome was, not what the action consisted of.


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## sunyaer

entangledbank said:


> ... Looking out of the window and seeing something, you would say 'there's a robbery happening in the street', ...


Does this sound natural?

"Look, look, look over there..., guys, there is a robbery happening in that store."



wandle said:


> When something happens and we actually watch it taking place, we would still not normally say that we saw it happening. The natural expression would be 'I saw it happen'.
> 
> ...



This explains the logic.


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## wandle

sunyaer said:


> Does this sound natural?
> 
> "Look, look, look over there..., guys, there is a robbery happening in that store."


Yes, that is natural enough, at least in colloquial language (I would prefer 'going on'). Also, we regularly say 'What's happening?'


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## sunyaer

Cenzontle said:


> The first strange thing I see in this sentence is "*There was* a car accident *happening*"—it sounds like an event in progress,
> and as if the observer is going to describe the development of the accident, from millisecond to millisecond.
> I would say instead "There was a car accident *that happened* a while ago..."
> or better yet, delete the "happen" verb and just say "There was a car accident a while ago..."
> 
> << Deleted - not relevant to this thread >>



I found a similar sentence without "happening" in unit 7 on page 136 of the book "_Future English for Results 3":

_"There was an accident on Route 4 just before the bridge yesterday afternoon."


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## JulianStuart

sunyaer said:


> "There was an accident on Route 4 just before the bridge yesterday afternoon."


That is unremarkable. 
"There was a car accident near here a while ago"
 "There was an earthquake yesterday at 4 pm".
"An accident happened yesterday afternoon"  
"An earthquake happened at 4pm yesterday". "I felt the ground shaking as it was happening."


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## sdgraham

sunyaer said:


> I found a similar sentence without "happening" in unit 7 on page 136 of the book "_Future English for Results 3":
> 
> _"There was an accident on Route 4 just before the bridge yesterday afternoon."


Could you please tell us what point you want to make, Sunyaer?

I rather imagine you can review thousands of stories from U.S. media without ever encounter "accident happening," e.g. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27666159/denver-two-people-killed-one-car-accident

As a side note, the scanned image you sent is on a reading level appropriate for _extremely_ young children.


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## sunyaer

sdgraham said:


> Could you please tell us what point you want to make, Sunyaer?
> 
> ...
> 
> As a side note, the scanned image you sent is on a reading level appropriate for _extremely_ young children.



I wanted to say that I came to feel that "there was an accident happening..." doesn't sound natural to me now. That might not be true for many non-native speakers, as it was for me some time ago.

Although the materials are for "_extremely_ young children", they are natural language, which non-native speakers should learn.


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## JulianStuart

sunyaer said:


> I wanted to say that I came to feel that "there was an accident happening..." doesn't sound natural to me now. That might not be true for many non-native speakers, as it was for me some time ago.


This is good.  "There was a soccer game happening" however, is just fine.  The key issue is that a soccer game has a substantial duration, while an accident does not.


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## sunyaer

JulianStuart said:


> "An accident happened yesterday afternoon"
> "An earthquake happened at 4pm yesterday". "I felt the ground shaking as it was happening."





JulianStuart said:


> This is good.  "There was a soccer game happening" however, is just fine.  The key issue is that a soccer game has a substantial duration, while an accident does not.


If the speaker was sitting in the car that came into an accident, the accident does have duration when the speaker is describing the event, as in the earthquake example above:

"I felt a bang when the accident was happening as our car was running into the rear of the truck. We were lucky that no one got killed."

Does "happening" sound right in the above sentence?


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## sdgraham

sunyaer said:


> "I felt a bang when the accident was happening as our car was running into the rear of the truck. We were lucky that no one got killed."
> 
> Does "happening" sound right in the above sentence?



As always, what is the* source* of this statement, please?


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## sunyaer

sdgraham said:


> As always, what is the* source* of this statement, please?


l made it up myself.


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## sdgraham

OK, we're back to the original situation. How long did it take between the first contact with the hypothetical truck in front of you until you stopped or lost contact?

Note that it's often possible to contrive some sort of context in an attempt to justify some otherwise inappropriate sentence construction.


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## sunyaer

sdgraham said:


> OK, we're back to the original situation. How long did it take between the first contact with the hypothetical truck in front of you until you stopped or lost contact?


Who knows, it's very short. Do you need to know that before uttering a sentence using "happening"?



sdgraham said:


> Note that it's often possible to contrive some sort of context in an attempt to justify some otherwise inappropriate sentence construction.


What's your point? Does the last sentence with "happening" I made up work in the contrived context?


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## JulianStuart

sunyaer said:


> Who knows, it's very short. Do you need to know that before uttering a sentence using "happening"?


 Sounds a little argumentative to me  Everything has a "duration", _technically _- although the shortest possible duration is known as the "Planck time" - it is 10 -47 seconds 
"I felt a bang *when the accident was happening* as our car was running  into the rear of the truck. We were lucky that no one got killed."  The text in bold may be grammatically correct but it is not idiomatic.  It is something contrived to justify the construction you think is "native". It is not.  A bang does not have much of a duration either. We would either omit the bold text or replace it with "during the accident", and the "running" would likely be replaced by "ran".  There are grammar rules, logic rules and "idiomatic speech". Many things can be grammatically correct and physics influences technical correctness but we are trying to help you learn idiomatic English.


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## sunyaer

A car accident lasts in a very short time, happening in a way that the experiencer(s) are not aware of it ahead of time. So it's unnatural to recount a car accident out of memory. However, for accidents that have a clear duration, such as a serial of explosions in a factory, it feels natural to describe the event afterwards in detail. For example, a worker in an oil refinery factory says:

"There were a serial of explosions happening in my factory yesterday afternoon around three o'clock. When the accident was happening, I was at work operating my machine. You just hear big bangs one after another."

Is "happening" idiomatic in the above sentence in the context said? (I've used "hear" instead of "heard", simulating a real recount.)


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## sdgraham

sunyaer said:


> Is "happening" idiomatic in the above sentence in the context said?



Not as far as I'm concerned. I would not describe a "series of explosions' as "an accident."


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## wandle

Firstly 'there were a serial of explosions' is not right: it ought to be 'there was a series of explosions'.

Secondly, after starting like that, specifying the events, it is not idiomatic to say 'when the accident was happening'.
'Accident' is a more general term. We would be more likely to use it at the beginning: 'There was a terrible accident at work today' and then explain that it was a series of explosions. Or we might describe the events first and then say 'The whole thing was a frightful accident'.


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## sdgraham

You will be far, far further along, sunyaer, if you accept that fact that "accident happening" is a poor choice of words in English, no matter how many scenarios you contrive in an attempt to justify that usage.


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## Dale Texas

sdgraham said:


> You will be far, far further along, sunyaer, if you accept that fact that "accident happening" is a poor choice of words in English, no matter how many scenarios you contrive in an attempt to justify that usage.



Exactly. Just as you would finally have to say to a lone English poster on the Chinese-English forum, being told repeatedly by all the native speakers that the placement of his or her ideograms is incorrect, and sincerely trying to explain the logic of it, and the English speaker coyly posting back the same incorrect structure in another post, and another post,  and another post, in some way _insisting_ that Chinese structure _will _ conform to his English preconceptions.  You would have to say, "Stop fighting and accept it."  

.


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## sunyaer

wandle said:


> ...
> Accident' is a more general term.
> ...





sdgraham said:


> You will be far, far further along, sunyaer, if you accept that fact that "accident happening" is a poor choice of words in English, no matter how many scenarios you contrive in an attempt to justify that usage.



Now I think I'm able to make my conclusion. As a matter of fact, the word "accident" comes from the root "cadere", which means "fall", "happen". With the prefix "ad-", which has been harmonized to be "ac-" in this case, "accident" takes the sense of "happen" in completeness. So there is no natural combination of "accident happening" in any context. Does this sound like an easy way of understanding the usage?


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## wandle

I am afraid that is not really an accurate account of the derivation of 'accident' in the present sense.
'Accident happening' is not an impossible collocation at all, though (try an internet search).

The problem comes in trying to say 'while the accident was happening' or similar expressions.
The reason why that does not work has already been mentioned.





wandle said:


> There is a point here which, as sdgraham says, is not about tense: it is about the logic of the word 'happen'. This word focuses on the result, not the process. When we say that something happened, we are saying what the outcome was, not what the action consisted of.


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## sunyaer

Let me confirm with you first about whether these are idiomatic or not:

1."There was a big traffic jam happening on Route 4 yesterday afternoon around 3 o'clock."

2. "There were many air travel accidents happening last year."

In sentence 1, there was a duration in the built-up of the traffic jam, so "happening" makes sense. The plural noun "accidents" in sentence 2 justifies the use of "happening". Am I right?


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## sdgraham

No. 

Drop the "happening."

1."There was a big traffic jam happening on Route 4 yesterday afternoon around 3 o'clock."

2. "There were many air travel accidents happening last year."


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## Cagey

The topic of this thread is whether we describe an accident as 'happening'. 
This topic has been thoroughly discussed and explained from many points of view. 

Native speakers agree that it is not an idiomatic collocation. 
This does not stop you from using it if you wish. 

There is nothing to be gained from further discussion.
This thread is closed. 

If you are interested in the use of happening more generally, there are many previous threads that discuss happening in other contexts. 


Thank you to everyone who contributed to this thorough discussion.  

Cagey, moderator.


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