Our morbid curiosity an accident waiting to happen on social media

Any crash on the M50 reduces all of Dublin to a near standstill, not because it’s impossible to pass the crashed cars, but because it’s impossible to pass the gawkers who slow down or stop their own vehicles, with or without using their mobile phones, lest they miss any detail that could be passed on to others.

‘Consensus outrage,” my friend said, as we realised that while we were meant to be talking to each other, we were listening to the conversation at the next table in the coffee shop. Three couples were at that table, and they were discussing the presence, on social media, of photographs of a four-car fatal crash on the M50.

Not just photographs, one of them said, but videos. Can you imagine?