“Cars crash throughout the story lines of drama and video games, to be watched from remote-controlled safety or steered with joysticks in technology’s remove. The world has watched Jackson Pollock, James Dean and Lady Di perish in wrecks. Reading about car crashes in the news, we empathise with their victims, yet their tragedies feel remote. We are “adepts of proximity without risk”, as Susan Sontag once put it, but strangely insatiable. Like junk food, we tend to consume tragedy in supersize portions while gaining nothing in substance.”