How do you know when on-the-job accidents occur? I have never once seen an "Action" message on the screen indicating that a villager had an 'accident,' or was injured from one.

The only time you would see it is if you had the villager selected (with the ellipse at his or her feet) at the time of the injury, when you would see the message, "Ouch! The villager was injured doing this task."

Since the game log has been removed in VV3 for performance reasons, you won't be able to see it there.

But my vv3,
When dropping the VV ON THE FRUIT, goes and plants it in the orchard . but then after closing and re-opening it's not planted. then I check back near the primitive lift, not there even. I have to repair the lift, but till that how can I live with one limited food source? if I stop the game they won't reaserch, if I unpause the game the food source will over. It rains very rarely and the mushrooms appear very rarely.

WHAT CAN I DO ?

Under normal circumstances, if you let the villager finish the task, and you see the tree growing in the orchard, it will continue to grow until it matures and produces fruit. If you interrupted the villager who was carrying the fruit, or if your computer's system clock was adjusted (or is not stable), you will see problems with the game.

Since you're very early in the game, it might be best to start over, unless you really like a challenging start.

THANK YOU LADY.
Now it's ok, it was the system clock

I've worked out that, regardless of your BEST efforts, villagers will die anyway. I've also found that it isn't such a bad thing.
I spend sooooo much time searching for mushrooms to appease the hungry tribe. When your tribe members die down to smaller populations, you don't have this issue.
I've found that a tribe of 8 or less means that my villagers are more productive, tasks are completed more efficiently (you can argue whether it is faster but I think so as the larger the tribe, it seems the larger the mass about the food storage and the minority staying on task), AND most importantly - they are much less likely to run so short on food that they die of starvation.
Allowing your population to decrease also helps you to increase your villagers in their parenting skills. I found my tribe members were constantly procreating and making my population unsustainable.

I don't allow my villagers to have any more babies until they've found out how to get rid of the sharks so they can go fishing. That solves the problem of food running out (so long as enough are on farming duties).

Mushrooms sprout more in the rain?

WHY DIDN`T I THINK OF THAT!?

I must be doing something different, because so far, only one of my villagers has died of starvation. And I actually killed him by accident while making a potion to revive his "weakened" state.

In general, I try to limit my population until I have a big enough food source. It's either that, or spend a lot of time hunting mushrooms and keeping the game paused when I'm not actually at the computer. Farming first, is my motto.

Yes, I don't understand that one either. But is the chief the same person wearing the robe?