James and Vaughn

Let's focus on the hypothesis that JG Ballard is interested in showing his readers how disturbing or embarrassing it is to depend so much on technology. The hierarchy of characters in Crash is based on not only the damage they've received from automobiles but also from their lack of emotional receptors. To James there is also an element of sexual awakening that accompanies these life-threatening moments. It is unclear whether or not any of the crash victims besides James experience this awakening but if we look to him as a paragon of the enlightened then perhaps they must. With our introduction to Vaughn, James slips in the idea that "he was saved from being no more than a pushy careerist with a Pd.D by a strain of naive idealism, his strange vision of the automobile and its real role in our lives" (64). James might actually look to Vaughn as something of a prophet. He knows much more than everyone else about this compartment everyone spends all of their time inside. This puts a bizarre spin on the idea that JG Ballard is denouncing the public's insistence on driving/the materialism associated with driving. It isn't that the people shouldn't be obsessed with their cars but that they are obsessed with them for the wrong reasons. Vaughn knows the right reasons to manipulate and understand traffic.

Vaughn's lack of emotion, dented features and obsession with death-by-crash can be interpreted as his movement away from human "normalcy" and towards some weird automobile/technological machine mash up. James's obsession with the sexual potential or nature of cars is revealed in several passages that blend the line between organic and mechanical shapes. During his first sexual encounter with Helen in his car: "This small space was crowded with angular control surfaces and rounded sections of human bodies interacting in unfamiliar junctions..." (80); "The plastic laminates around me, the color of washed anthracite, were the same tones as her pubic hairs... The passenger compartment enclosed us like a machine generating from our sexual act an homunculus of blood, semen and engine coolant" (81). In this last passage James actually conjures up a baby created by their bodies and the car.

It should be noted that after James can drive alone he and Catherine don't drive in the same car even if they're going to the same place.