Musing about how the media, and some of the public, are dealing with the death of racing driver Dan Wheldon. Of course it should be sad when anyone dies but Dan died pursuing a sport that is based on danger. If travelling at high speed wasn’t dangerous then it wouldn’t be thrilling. Naturally the sport should be as safe as possible given its intent, but you can’t remove all risks.
Compare the coverage to that of the thousands who die every day in Africa due to no fault of their own, often because they lack basics such as clean water. If the news was in proportion to the number of fatalities then the whole of every paper would be devoted to those topics.
Presumably part of this phenomenon is that people feel an attachment to Dan as they followed him on television etc. Is that the only reason though?
