Traffic Violence in Popular Media

We take car crashes and horrible injuries from cars, trucks as a part of normal life. An “act of god”. Unavoidable. An accident. Oops! Cars are fast, lazy, destructive things, and media normalizes the idea that people die from car crashes all the time and that it’s not a problem.

This is a list of media where someone in a film, movie, TV, 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, let’s move on”. Why do we accept that car crashes are simply an OK and acceptable way to die? The same way we might treat, “Ah yeah, they had a heart attack. Nothing to be done!”

The acts of traffic violence often serve the plot.