Anatomy of a Car Crash: The ripple effect of a road collision

Tom Lineman who works at the Broken Jub Pub in Ballina, Co Mayo and was a witness to the crash on New Years Day 2014, which claimed the lives of Gearid Scully and Terence Beagan. Photograph: Keith Heneghan

When a road crash occurs, the event touches an extraordinary number of people, both immediately and over a lengthy period of time.

This ripple effect belies the momentary attention crashes get in the media and in society at large.

In the first instance, there are the persons directly involved in a crash people in vehicles or struck by them. If injured, the consequences range from speedy recovery, in perhaps minutes or hours, to permanent disability, coma, quadriplegia and brain damage.

There are those who may dwell for a time on near misses or what did not happen to them: in the case of the New Years Day N26 crash, people such as Tom Lenehan, floor supervisor at the Broken Jug pub, were associated with the victims minutes before the crash.

First responders to road crashes will almost invariably include paramedics, fire fighters and garda.

Firefighters must remove from the wreckage dead and injured, who may be hysterical with fear and in acute pain. Firefighters also clean up part of the mess. This can include hosing a road to remove irretrievable remains.

Garda are involved at every other level, including comforting the injured and helping co-ordinate actions and ensuring the smooth continuation of normal life.

Finally, but not least, there are the immediate family and close friends of the dead and injured, their acquaintances and the wider community, who will all be affected by a tragedy in varying degrees of intensity.

In the case of the N26 crash, it is possible to count about 50 individuals very closely connected to the event and its aftermath.

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Anatomy of a Car Crash: The ripple effect of a road collision