engleski

Do We Appreciate the Cult of Death More than a Human Life?

The authors would like to offer an interdisciplinary analysis of one of the severest traffic accidents on Croatian roads in the past 15 years. This analysis will show that the accident in question could have been prevented, thus four human lives could have been saved. Traffic accident related deaths are, statistically speaking, between the most often causes of morbidity and mortality in Croatia. By causing injury, disability and death, they create extensive additional pressure on Croatian health care and related resources. The accident in question, taking into account the nature of its occurrence, raised suspicions among Rijeka’ s forensic experts. It is arguable that this accident was not the result of bad weather conditions, oversight of the driver, or effect of alcohol on driving performance. Namely, the driver who caused this accident drove through a highway tunnel, surpassing other vehicles and practically driving in the opposite track. By exiting the tunnel, he crushed in full speed into a van, and after that a car carrying three passengers. The witnesses of the accident reported that it seemed to be a suicide act. There was a van of a local TV reporters’ team driving through that tunnel exactly in that period. Although a horrible accident occurred right in front of their eyes, their journalist instinct did not abandoned them, they stopped the van and turned on the camera, filming the entire scene: crushed vehicles in flame, and other vehicles witnessing the accident, but passing by without stopping for help. After three to five minutes of filming this road chaos, a huge shock hit the reporters: several seconds before the car was completely consumed by fire, the right back door opens and severely injured women crawls out crying for help! The investigation showed that the 60 years old driver who caused the accident was a psychiatric patient, with already two suicide attempts exactly by traffic accidents. Thus, his driver’ s license should have been taken away. Unfortunately, only one month before this third accident, the local authorities issued him a proof of being competent for driving. The forensic expertise showed that in the burning car a 34 years old man and a several months old baby boy died of suffocation, and practically burned to death. Since the right front and back door of the car could have been opened from the outside, a prompt help by bystanders could have saved their lives. There are several legal and medical omissions behind this tragic accident concerning the psychiatric patient causing it. Additionally, the journalists’ professional and personal ethics should be put into question, since the reporters team filmed the entire scene without attempting to help, and this accident filled the pages of all Croatian newspapers for days. But, more painful than the professional misconduct is the human negligence. Four human lives, that could have been saved, were brutally swept away in an accident witnessed by dozens of people, but no one came in their rescue. Are we indeed becoming a society so used to pain and suffering that we just do not react to it any more? Are we just passing by a suffering human being not thinking that in a different situation it could be us? We are living in a time and society that worships the culture of youth and beauty at any costs, forgetting the culture of life and (natural) death. This accident, paradoxically, showed that we are actually continuously infatuated with the “ cult of death” through mass media exposure of similar situations, taking into account that today, only a bad news is a worth-something-news. The authors, thus, believe that such emergencies and disasters, for all their personal, professional and societal consequences, should become part of the focus of bioethical deliberation.

emergencies and disasters; traffic accidents; human life; culture of death; bioethics

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