Not surprisingly someone at Wired Magazine had the same question I did in wondering why so many cars in Russia are driving around with dashboard cams. Equally not surprisingly, they haven’t yet investigated the origin of the Sharpies on the crippled February Carnival Cruise.
Yet even in this story I was drawn to the story behind the phenomena. I realize that by offering you the link to the Wired story I might be an accessory to your wasting time watching horrific car crash videos. Why are these on-line and why did I follow the link and watch two of them?
I selected two from YouTube, which polices its content to some extent, as I didn’t want to view the most horrific crashes. Yet there are sites that don’t police content. There viewers are drawn to watch supposedly much more violent videos which I presume include fatal crashes.
What draws us to watch? Do we like being on the edge of our seats knowing a horrific incident is impending? Is watching an evolutionary instinct? Though for what benefit? As replaying the past is barely a blip in the timescale of human evolution it’s hard to see the role this fascination could possibly have played in human evolution. Or then again is it? Human brains clearly have the capacity to replay the past as happens tragically in those suffering from PTSD. I suppose there exists volumes of research on the Internet on the why and wherefore of the human brain replaying horrific events—maybe that’s a search for another day.
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