Sick Sydney entertained by violent crash deaths.
THE tragic late-night deaths of a young mother and a truck driver in Sydney had one thing in common - both victims spent their final moments as macabre suburban entertainment.
When a young mother crashed into a tree at Burwood, in Sydney's west, on Monday night her male loved-one ran to the car, pulling at the door in a desperate attempt to try to free her while her head slumped over.
The woman, thought to be in her 30s, died instantly. Still he pulled at the door as the car started to smoke.
He was screaming for help but some of the residents just walked out of their homes and stared.
Three hours later, a truck flipped at Yagoona in Sydney's southwest.
The impact of the crash crushed the middle-aged male driver of the prime mover carrying a shipping container.
Hanging upside-down, his legs gripped in the twisted metal, the dying man screamed in pain and yelled "help, help, help" to a crowd assembling at the roadside.
But this is no final salute.
They died as mothers in pyjamas and dressing gowns watched on with dozy toddlers. As teenagers strutted around the crime scene, exhilarated, to see tragedy unfold.
Sirens and flashing blue-red lights of emergency cars or as one youth says, "the party vans" lured them to the scene.
They jostled to find a clearer view. They laughed, maybe at a private joke, and took photographs.
The bodies were still in view. Gore porn.
Crash victims too often die, not only in excruciating pain but as a public spectacle.
The final screams of a dying man, the last breath of a dying woman, in front of a thrilled audience murmuring at the horror of it all, yet sipping from a mug of hot coffee as they move closer to the action.
"He was screaming, he was yelling for help," one man said at the scene.
"We called triple-0 and tried to open the door but one look at him and you knew he was gone."
Theirs was a grim end. They died and crowds stared, shocked and open-mouthed, or wide-eyed and jovial and did little to help.
At both scenes there were good Samaritans, there was the family who saw the car beginning to catch fire and went searching for a hose. There was the neighbour who put it out with a fire extinguisher.
Most of the rubberneckers who stopped to see the carnage just watch.
"What can I do?" one woman said, who refused to give her name but loudly announced: "There's no way he's getting out alive."
"It's not like I know CPR."
Maybe not - but one could give the crash victims the dignity of dying without spectators, their children in tow, treating crime scenes as movie theatres with snacks and drinks.
Because the last thing that the dying victims saw was just that.
