As buildings become higher, larger, and more complex, safety issues for construction workers working at such environments become more important. We analyzed 83 critical accident cases reported to the KOSHA(Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency) for construction cranes by types of cranes and by patterns of accidents and causes. There are more number of accidents related to mobile cranes than that related to tower cranes, but the numbers of dead were similar in both cases. The most dominant cause of crane accidents was "fall of materials". We also analyzed the cases of crane accidents using the FMEA(Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) in order to set up a priority for safety management and also to prioritize research and development items relating tower cranes. In the process, we tried to eliminate subjective indexes such as an expert group survey and use objective and quantitative indexes. As a result, it was found that critical crane accidents occurs most during the "lifting and translating" activity.