Why share car crash images?

We understand the image below is confronting and it should be.

The vehicle in which the deceased driver was travelling is an horrific wreck.

Its eerily twisted frame quickly jars with the viewer at first glance.

It is hard to imagine how traumatic the scene was for other motorists and emergency services crews first to attend on Monday afternoon.

But that is the situations our emergency services are dealing with far too often on Great Southern roads this year.

24 people are dead from crashes in 2016.

We do not make a quick decision when choosing to run such images, particularly when people from our community have been killed.

This media outlet posted the image online Tuesday morning, about 16 hours after the crash and following police confirming the age of the deceased.

While other media outlets chose to run it on Monday night in the hours following the crash, we elected to give police time to inform loved ones of those involved, so they would not find out via social media.

Some followers applauded our decision to use the image, others condemned it.

Journalists are not immune from emotion, despite some public perceptions.

We have families and travel frequently on local highways.

We just hope that the image may make drivers think twice about what they do while behind the wheel and avoid becoming another statistic.

With local roads set to be inundated with holiday travel in coming weeks, statistics suggest this won’t be the last fatality we report on this year.