1761: Sensitised

If you buy in to the popular perception that various forms of media — particularly movies, TV and video games — desensitise people to horrific and violent things, then you are an idiot.

Okay, that might be a bit strong, even if it’s what I believe. But the experience I went through this morning certainly drove home the fact that reality is reality, and fantasy is fantasy.

It was something I’d seen many times in the virtual world. Something I’d deliberately caused to happen many times in the virtual world. And yet seeing it in reality — even for just the fleeting moment that I did — was horrifying and disturbing.

I was driving to work as I normally do, along the M27, which regular readers will know is a road I despise for numerous reasons, not least of which is the fact that it gets very busy and seems to have more than its fair share of “incidents” and “accidents”, according to the overhead electronic signs. (I’m not actually sure what the difference between the two is, but I know that they both cause enormous delays on a nearly daily basis.)

It was early in the morning. The sun was just starting to rise, bathing the Eastern sky, which I was driving towards, in a pretty peachy-orange glow peeking out from behind the clouds. The day was dawning, and it was just about becoming possible to see things without the assistance of artificial lighting, though the streetlamps were still illuminated and most drivers still had their headlamps on.

The traffic wasn’t heavy — as I’ve noted recently, I’ve started leaving for work a lot earlier in the morning than I had done, as this allows me to miss the rush hour jams on the way to work, though I usually get caught in the beginnings of them on the way back when I leave. There was a steady flow of cars in both directions, though; people were on their way to work, though not yet in the numbers that would swarm onto the devil road just an hour or so later.

In other words, it was a perfectly normal morning. I was driving along, minding my own business, listening to some Emerson, Lake and Palmer and trying to make up my mind whether I was enjoying it or not, when suddenly it happened.

Over on the other side of the motorway, a small white van spun out of control then flipped over in what I can only describe as a movie-style crash. I was passing it by in the other direction as it happened, so I didn’t see the aftermath, but what I did see was enough to etch itself onto my memory for the rest of the day.

It didn’t look as if the van had actually hit anything; it looked like a loss of control. I wouldn’t have expected a simple loss of control to result in the vehicle leaping in the air and corkscrewing, however, but that’s what it did; it was a crash of the ilk you’d see in a video game like Burnout, only it was really happening. There was someone inside that van; there were people in the streams of cars that were speeding towards it, unaware that disaster had just struck a few hundred yards ahead of them. As I say, I didn’t see any of the aftermath, but I would be very surprised if there weren’t at least a couple of other cars involved after the fact — and I’d be even more surprised if anyone managed to get out of that without at least a few injuries.

It was a strange thing to witness; I felt surreal and disconnected, but at the same time painfully aware that it had really happened just a few metres away from me. It occupied my thoughts for the remainder of my journey to work, particularly as I saw the traffic starting to build up in the opposite direction and, with admirable response time, the emergency services start to make their way down the road to deal with the situation.

I don’t know how it happened or indeed what happened next; I hope that anyone involved in what looked like a horrific accident is as all right as it’s possible to be when something like that happens.

And if you’re heading out onto the roads in these wet and windy winter months, particularly first thing in the morning? Do please be careful.