This chapter is most interesting when read alongside the previous entry.  Whereas in the previous chapter Ballard had been able to experience the intensity of Vaughan’s feelings towards accidents and the injuries they cause, they were abstracted by the mannequins, and the controlled nature of the impact.   

In other words, the incident at the Road Research Laboratory was nothing more than a rehearsal for real accidents that were to take place on the highway system.  The impact itself brought arousal, but mostly as evidence of what could come to be. 

In this chapter Vaughan is able to transpose the mannequin characters with those of his fancy, celebrities whom had already died or been injured in accidents, or ones that he dreamed could.  Further, we gain greater insight into Vaughan’s recruitment process, of how he sifts and sorts through possible allies, allowing them to dream for themselves. 

Vaughan has constructed a questionnaire, a palette with which those he selects can create their own accidents.  Specifically, they can indulge in fantasies of injuries upon whomever they pleased, the initiate suffering at the hands of deranged minds.  

The list of recruits is slightly longer than we see in the movie:  “The subjects who completed the forms represented a cross-section of Vaughan’s world:  two computer programmers from his former laboratory, a young dietician, several airport stewardesses, a medical technician and Helen Remington’s clinic, as well as Seagrave and his wife Vera, the television producer and Gabrielle.” 

From the notes Ballard is able to ascertain that each of them had, at one time or another, been participants in major or minor accidents, a bond that draws them together.  Catherine, Ballard’s wife, was alone in never having succumbed, and this goes part way toward explaining why Vaughan pursued and threatened her on the highways, she was virgin flesh. 

The questionnaires include a long list of injuries.  Along with descriptions of how bodies succumb to the high impact of the weapons which have inflicted them – various bits and pieces of the interior of cars.  Accident photographs, showing details of bodily injuries, have inserts on them showing the offending car part that has made their mark. 

Seagraves obsessions remain celebrities:  “On these five women, Garbo, Jayne Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor, Bardot and Rachel Welch.”  And he shares with Vaughan a specific interest in injuries to the genitals (supporting the assertion made early that Vaughan was unduly influencing Seagraves).   

The gradual realisation that Ballard has a sexual interest in Vaughan is accentuated by the pictures.  Looking through the imaginary injuries inflicted upon the celebrities, and seeing into the minds of the participants of the Crash cult, Ballard elevates Vaughan to the status of celebrity, and ponders a sexual liaison.  It is through the impact photographs, both imagined and real, that his attention turns to the details of this man.

Ballard looks at Vaughan:  “Thinking of the photographs in the questionnaires, I knew that they defined the logic of a sexual act between Vaughan and myself…..Each of the imaginary wounds was the model for a sexual union of Vaughan’s skin and my own.  The deviant technology of the car crash provided the sanction for any perverse act.”   

Further, we read a phrase that Cronenberg deems worthy of dialog:  “.. a benevolent psychopathology beckoned toward us….”

The novel presents the text thus: