It’s nice to start the day on a positive note. I started this morning feeling a sense of privilege being out in this beautiful sunshine, knowing that the approaching winter is not always going to be welcome for everyone. I personally like winter for the snowfields, but not much else. It makes me appreciate just having a roof over my head. The homeless are far less fortunate, and are relatively voiceless. So I just had to share my enthusiasm to a few Twitter pals. Sharing is caring!
Unfortunately, social media can be confronting when we least expect it. The decision to return the follow of a local journalist – all fresh-faced and eager to share the latest, breaking news – is fairly routine for me. I had to keep up with the news daily for the Master of Communication, but lately have the opinion that less is more.
Soon after I commented on this fine day, I was confronted with an image posted by the journalist, a close-up frontal view of a completely smashed-in car. The crash had occurred at Cressy, the third for the town within one week. The Hamilton Highway has long stretches of single lanes and is notoriously consistent with producing the most horrific accidents. The roads are basically very poor in western Victoria. It’s usually a hasty patch and fill approach to keep maintenance costs down, with flying stones and potholes regularly experienced by car windscreens and suspensions throughout the region.
The memories were triggered instantly as I read the accompanying text. The circumstances appeared quite similar. This unfortunate driver has lost her life, with an infant traveling secured in the back seat who miraculously has survived. Lives are forever changed.
My friend lost her life driving through a town further west of this latest accident location, and on this same highway. Due to her habit of only text messaging the details, I had the impression she was en route to Adelaide from Ballan, and so we were excited to have her, her young daughter and their two dogs stop by for dinner and a sleepover. That is how she was, a real text message fan and so the details never seemed to matter. Our friendship was always on the hop and spontaneous. She was coming for a great little catch-up and I felt better knowing she was taking a break. Unfortunately what she didn’t convey in the text message was that she had already been to Adelaide and was coming back after spending a week there, and had been already on the road for five or so hours. The weather was awful that day, with all the horse races cancelled throughout the region.
My little girl – a toddler at the time – looked out the front door waiting for her playmate to arrive. I commented that our friends must have stopped at the side of the road somewhere – nobody could drive in that – and all would be okay. The rain was torrential. We waited and waited. I phoned my family and a friend in Melbourne as I hadn’t heard anything on the news. It felt really unusual. My close friend hesitated, and I could hear the anxiety in her voice. She told me of a bad accident out my way, but we both explained it away as the media reported incorrect ages of the people involved. Hours passed not knowing. I then received a phone call at around 10pm from a senior policeman who had attended the scene. Remarkably, the relatives must have passed this information on and so I knew that she was never coming to dinner. I’ll never forget that phone call; his immense sensitivity, his inability to as yet ascertain the circumstances in the relentless rain, and his sharing of a brief, meaningful moment before she lapsed into unconsciousness.
I never wanted to see any press image of the accident scene. I knew it was front page news given that people in both cars died that afternoon from a nasty head-on smash. My gorgeous friend and mother would want to be remembered for her vivacity, passion, love for nature and keen intellect. Years have passed and I still remember her as she deserves to be remembered. My driving habits changed practically overnight. It isn’t the first time we have been touched by the road toll. I no longer like driving on these roads at night.
Seeing the image this morning of a car wreck in seemingly similar circumstances shook me to the core. A friend who is an emergency service responder has also mentioned how ghoulish photojournalists can be with a certain newspaper outlet, how they often interfere with an accident scene with their need to get a close-up. We all know how Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were treated in death with grotesque images of the accident scene. Have we at all learnt anything from the pain this causes? Where is the ethical judgement in how images are framed? Why can’t they take photos of accident scenes from a respectful distance, and in cases of head-on collisions, to the side? Do we really need to see close-ups of mangled wreckage, acts of extreme mechanical violence? Why should we be unnecessarily triggered by people who either don’t think, or are working for agencies with flimsy ethical standards? Pity the families who mourn and think of all those who are forever changed. Photojournalists need to think of their actual audience, intended and unintended. It is appalling.