This is a personal rant.

I feel that modern society accepts car crashes and horrible injuries from cars and trucks and similar high-speed vehicles as a part of normal life. An “act of god”. Unavoidable. An “accident”. Oops!

Drivers will crash their cars into people and homes, a story about it will be on the news (likely absolving the driver of responsibility), and the idea of challenging the status quo around cars in the aftermath would be seen as heresy.

Movies and shows normalizes the idea that people die from car crashes all the time and that it’s not a problem we can solve. As if we’re powerless to stop using this thing that was invented only ~100 years ago after ~300,000 years of human existence.

I clearly have a strong opinion on this topic, but for the sake of this article I want to focus on how trivial car crashes are often portrayed in narratives.

This is a list of media where someone in a film, TV show, etc., is killed or hurt in an act of traffic violence by a driver and the audience barely even notices it. “My wife? Died in a car crash… (pause) Well, let’s get going”. The script might as well have said, “Oh, my son? A bear ate him … anyway, life goes on!”.

Acts of traffic violence often further the plot while expecting no reflection or consideration.

  • 28 Days Later (2002)
    • He’s in hospital at the start of the film due to a car crash that left him in a coma
  • The Babadook (2014)
    • Her husband died in a car crash, which is why she’s raising the child alone
  • Band of Brothers (2001)
    • “He was killed when I was 10, sir. Automobile accident.”
      • s01e07 - The Breaking Point
    • A soldier who survived WWII died because of a car crash. “Alton More returned to Wyoming with a unique souvenir…Hitler’s personal photo albums. He was killed in a car accident in 1958.”
      • s01e10 - Points
  • Better Call Saul
    • She crashes her car from exhaustion and ends up in the hospital
      • s03e10 - Lantern
  • Brainscan (1994)
    • Eddie Furlong’s mom dies in a car crash
  • Breaking Bad
    • When the group leader in Jesse’s rehab talks about running over his own daughter, killing her
      • s03e01 - No Más
  • The Blind Side (2009)
    • Major plot point of the movie is a car crash
  • The Dark Knight (2008)
    • A car is being used to try and kill the person who knows who Batman is
  • The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
    • “See, my mom died when I was small. Car accident, I don’t really remember it.”
  • The Fugitive (1993)
    • An intentional murder, with a car, of a prominent doctor was seen as an accident and it’s implied no-one was arrested or otherwise held accountable
      • “Dr. Alexander Lentz. A noted pathologist at Chicago Memorial Hospital was on his way to his daily tennis match when an unidentified vehicle swung around a curve, slammed his body into the barriers that separate the Drive from Lake Michigan. Yuck!”
  • Gothika (2003)
    • Dr. Miranda Grey, a psychiatrist at Woodward Penitentiary in rural western Connecticut, crashes her car one night on a country road to avoid hitting a young woman
  • The Great Gatsby (2013)
    • Finale/climax centers around a car crash
  • Halloween II (1981)
    • Ben Tramer is killed by a cop who claims, “He came out of nowhere”, but he absolutely did not
  • The Hunt for Red October (1990)
    • Part of the plot that a submarine expert was “clipped by a drunk driver” and “lost his leg”
  • Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
    • The main character is hit by a car while standing in the street, and the result of that crash drives much of the later story. The street had street lights, the character was standing still in the street for about 7 seconds, there was no other traffic, but a driver still managed to hit them
  • Knowing (2009)
    • Truck T-bones a car and kills a woman and that’s how she dies despite it being the literal end of the world
  • Misery (1990)
    • The whole movie hinges on him crashing his car
  • No Country for Old Men (2007)
    • After hours of murder and violence the killer is hurt more than anything because of a car crash
  • Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
    • President’s wife dies in a car crash
  • Pet Sematary (1989)
    • The movie hinges on a child being killed by a truck driver
  • Quicksilver (1986)
    • Laurence Fishburne is murdered by a driver while biking
  • Signs (2002)
    • His wife died in a car crash
  • The Sopranos
  • True Detective (2013)
    • “We had a baby girl. She died. Car accident.”
  • Vanilla Sky (2001)
    • Purposeful car crash is a major plot point
  • What Dreams May Come (1998)
    • The children die in a car crash. Four years later, Chris is also killed in a car crash