With regards to reading accident reports...

In my day job I am a safety officer for an air ambulance program. My background is in health and communications, not aviation. Many people in my program have backgrounds in aviation, and I have fantastic pilots with lots and lots of experience. We have an exemplary safety record (has nothing to do with me, the program was already 25 years old before the first official safety officer - me - was hired). One of the reasons that we have such an excellent record is because we all scan the horizon and read accident reports, learn what we can from them, and implement measures to keep us from repeating the same mistakes. Something like 80-90% of all aviation accidents have human factors at the root. Not all accidents are preventable, but many of them are. One of the most dangerous of all human factors is complacency. This is where you can really benefit from reading accident reports. Many accidents are caused by complacency. This, as Ronin points out, is more often the case with more experienced 'hikers' than with inexperienced ones. I agree, and this is a point that gets discussed regularly. People who successfully navigate minefields will gain in their confidence and push their envelope. Each time they have a success at a higher risk level, they become comfortable and push the risk level higher. At some point the risk becomes greater than the individual's ability to navigate, and an accident or 'event' occurs. So, accident reports can be a humble reminder that even the super experienced can get stomped by complacency.

As for fatigue, I will have to find the citation, and that might take me a while, but IIRC, being awake for 18 hours straight is the equivalent of a blood alcohol content of 0.08. Fatigue is a HUGE factor in aviation accidents, and may well be an underappreciated factor in many hiking-related accidents. I know that on Denali, and in mountaineering in general, by far the majority of accidents occur on the descent, not so much because of physical fatigue or terrain, but because of mental fatigue and loss of concentration. Astute readers of this forum will note that we often recommend very modest distances for the first few trips because most people totally underestimate how fatiging it can be to carry even modest loads over unimproved terrain. Perhaps there is not enough emphasis on the reason for this recommendation, and more discussion on the effects of fatigue might be in order. Anyway, point being, fatigue truly is a very real safety issue, and sometimes we push ourselves alot harder than we realize.

MNS

Edit:
17-19 hours awake = BAC of 0.05
22 hours awake = BAC of 0.10
24 hours awake = BAC of 0.19

For most people this is equal to significant cognitive impairment.