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Comment by gilgoomesh | Hacker News Reader

The computer programmer in me says both are valid:

"on accident" is a pre-prepared behavior that will be employed when an accident occurs in the future.

"by accident" is metadata accompanying an event, reporting the author or agent that created the event.

It sounds like old-style BASIC exception handling.

    ON ACCIDENT GOTO EMERGENCYROOM

Or modern JavaScript event handling. Button.onAccident(function() { ... });

Except that's not how it is used, it is used in place of "by accident."

"I knocked over the glass on accident."

In the first case, it would be more clear to say "upon accident."