Why is "incident" a blocked synonym for 事故?

[rumade]

@UselessMiwa

Fair enough that they’re more synonymous in british english, but I don’t know if it’s wanikani’s fault that your version of english is less precise than american english.

They’re also synonymous on Jisho.org though

[PotatoDancer]

but is “traffic accident” accepted for 事故

[pm215]

@rumade

They’re also synonymous on Jisho.org though

EDICT listing both is more of an indication “this Japanese word could be translated as either of these words sometimes depending on the context”. It’s not trying to say that the two words are synonyms in English, or that they’re both equally good at capturing the central meaning of the Japanese word.

[arlo]

Hi all,

Upon further review we’ve decided to just put ‘incident’ on the warning list for 事故. While there is some overlap, we don’t feel that ‘accident’ and ‘incident’ are interchangeable and we want to avoid confusion with the words 事件 and 事変, thus we did not put this on the allow list.

[rumade]

Thank you for your clarification