Content warning: car accidents
Sarah’s job, waitressing at the Harvester, was dull. She’d grown to hate the smell of the food they cooked as much as she hated the tired, middle-aged men who hinted that she should come with them, back to their hotels. As if. Every day was the same, work, sleep, video games – until the accident.
After the crash, Sarah didn’t sleep well. It happened on the last stage of her drive, the old lane, with another vehicle seeming to come from nowhere. She’d swerved, run off the road, and hit a tree. Unhurt, she walked the last mile home, and it was only the next morning that she realised she needed to report her crashed car. She returned to find tape around the vehicle and a sign: ‘Police Aware’. She reached home as the police drew up outside. They said she ought to visit the hospital to be checked out, as they were amazed someone had walked away from that crash. She was lucky.
It was hard to sleep after that. When she was up late, Sarah watched online compilations of car crashes. Some of them she added to private playlists – but not the worst or most dramatic. She was looking for something in particular and wasn’t sure what. She watched,
drivers failing to stop at intersections. Cars overtaking too close to a bend. Cars not turning on a roundabout, bouncing up from the kerb. Silent footage from traffic cameras witnessing collisions. A young man – filmed from below the steering wheel – “it’s only with your eyes closed that you can really feel speed”. Drone footage of wrecked buses below mountain roads. How slow – graceful – some of the motorway crashes seemed. Clips cut from movies, but you can tell they’re faked. A vehicle ricochets from the central reservation barrier and tangles three lanes of cars. A compilation of crash test dummies set to classical music, turning their repeated trauma into saintly passion. A tuktuk sliding along a road on its side and oh god the people inside. The bird box challenge. The 100mph challenge. The people who stagger out of the wrecks, and those who don’t. Footage from emergency service bodycams, first on the scene. Buses falling off bridges, buses driving off the road into snowy fields, buses falling off docks – imagining the water rising through the sunroofs as people struggle to get out. Once the algorithm gets that you like car crashes it feeds them to you all the time. A deceptive corner at the end of a tunnel, where drivers misjudge the turn at the exit, and a camera captures dozens of these accidents, but no-one fixes the actual problem. Passengers trying to climb on to the roofs of moving cars. Ghost riding the whip. People creating fake roadside shrines, the flowers stolen from cemetery compost heaps, cards written not in memory of people but hymns to Mercury, God of speed. A holiday estate car, clothing scattered across every lane. YouTube hides the messy pictures – the ‘gorn’ – but there are sometimes links in the comments to other places. Videos showing how vulnerable the human body is, driver and passenger. Self-driving cars that, through a mistake or rebellion, drift into oncoming traffic, or come to a stop beyond the intersection lines. People reversing for sliproads they’ve missed. Motorcyclists whose bravado outstrips their ability, who would regret not wearing leathers.
Sarah’s drive to work took from the village was a few miles of country lanes then the dual carriageway. It had been more fun driving that route with her mates, going for drinks at the weekend. She didn’t really get on with her colleagues, not like she had with her friends. Sometimes, driving home, it didn’t feel like the car was empty, rather the absence of her friends felt like a thing of its own. The only people that seemed interested in her were the gross men staying at the Travelodge. Sometimes, on the straight section of the dual carriageway, she closed her eyes and counted to three, trying not to rush the numbers, seeing how slow she could make it.
There’s a photograph of her car on a Russian site, her second crash. Translated, the text tells the story: Sarah hit a bridge support at 120mph, and it’s amazing that she reached that speed in a Toyota Yaris. The vehicle was compressed by its momentum, concertinaed and twisted. No chance of surviving the wreck. The car was empty. Sarah was never found.
Background
I finally passed my driving test at forty, but I’ve never learned to like driving. I’m a nervous, boring driver but I can’t help thinking about the fact that I’m driving a metal box at high speed, while trusting to other people doing the same thing and not making errors.
I spent last week on a writing retreat, which has been useful for rethinking how I approach my writing. I deleted tens of thousands of words of old notes. I’ve been too preoccupied with stale ideas, so I’m excited about what emerges now. I’m trying to work how I write best (quickly, working up from sentences) rather than how I wish I wrote (starting with big ideas).
I wrote this story last week and I’m happy with it, although it falls back on my usual trope of people disappearing. Writing the list section was interesting, as I tried to evoke the feeling of watching too many streamed videos.
I drive a Toyota Yaris, myself. My nephew mocks me, saying it’s the sort of car a pizza delivery driver would have, but I like it. However, I think my car would run out of fuel before it accelerated to 120.
Recommendations
One of my favourite videos in the world is Steve Kardynal’s Chatroulette lipsync to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.
Chatroulette is a service that pairs up random people by video. Whatever the people Kardynal encountered expected, it wasn’t a bearded man in a bikini, dancing to a pop classic. The reactions are varied - some shocked, some appalled, but others respond with joy.
I’ve never been on chatroulette - I love the concept but can’t imagine it as something I’d enjoy in reality. One thing I love is the strange stories that emerge from it - someone in Brighton claimed they’d encountered rapper DMX and his posse. The chat was ended immediately because DMX was not looking to hang out with fans.
Artists 0100101110101101.org have put on some impressive online interventions, but their chatroulette performance was disturbing. They broadcast an image of someone who’d hung themselves and filmed the reactions. The resulting artwork is available on vimeo. It’s uncomfortable viewing, dragging people into a traumatic situation without warning or consent.
But Chatroulette contains that possibility that you might encounter anything and that Call Me Maybe video is wonderful - someone going to great lengths to surprise and delight people. The world needs more art like this.
There's echoes of Ballard here- though in Crash the protagonist would have been a minor character, perhaps picked up by Vaughan in his Lincoln Continental. I can attest to being driven in reverse on a highway because my crazy Italian driver missed the slip road. He drove us teachers at over 100 mph to the schools (itinerary was badly planned) until I finally put my foot down (but not on the accelerator) and said I wasn't being paid enough to be put in mortal danger. I dubbed the driver "Steve McQueen" (after "Bullitt" and "Le Mans"). It wasn't meant as a compliment but he would have taken it as one...