A spectator taking a selfie next to the 2023 Tour de France ended up snapping rider Sepp Kuss … [+]
If you’re taking a selfie, try practicing some selfie awareness and some selfie control. On Sunday during the 2023 Tour de France, a spectator decided to use a smartphone to take a self-portrait photo next to the riders. That turned out to be not so smart, because the riders then did a kind of cycling race. While taking the selfie, the spectator’s arm touched the handlebars of American cyclist Sepp Kuss. That sent Kuss down, leading to a huge bunch of about 20 riders on stage 15 of the race and perhaps a lot of cursing along the way.
NBC Sports Cycling posted a video of the selfie-inspired crash on Twitter:
The BBC quoted Kuss as saying: “There was a choke in town and a spectator on the road, and I think he just cut my handlebars.” Kuss added: “Luckily I’m okay and hopefully the other guys in the crash are okay. It’s not ideal.” Yes, having a spectator cause a 20 rider crash just to get a photo is certainly not ideal.
Fortunately, no one appeared to be seriously injured. All riders involved in the crash did manage to complete stage 15, which consisted of a 179km route from Les Gets les Portes du Soleil to Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc in France. The Dutchman Wout Poels, who already had a few minutes ahead in the leading group at the time of the crash, eventually won the stage.
Several cycling teams posted some umm-maybe-you-should-be-more-aware-of-your-surroundings on social media after the crash. For example, this is what the Dutch cycling team Jumbo-Visma tweeted:
As you can see, cycling enthusiast Phillip Martindale responded by saying that spectators touched cyclists in the middle of the race. Umm, while it may be touching to be at the 110th running of this world-famous cycling race, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to touch the riders.
This was not the first and certainly not the last accident caused by a selfie. In fact, expect the number of accidents caused by selfies to continue to increase every year as selfies become more and more a part of everyday life. A 2018 publication in the Journal of family medicine and primary care described what came up when a team from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and IIT Kanpur in India used Google to search for keywords like “selfie deaths; selfie accidents; selfie mortality; self-photography deaths; cabbage deaths; mobile deaths/accidents.” They found 259 selfie deaths in 137 crashes from October 2011 to November 2017. The mean age at death was 22.94 years. This was more of a got-man situation where 72.5% of the people who died were men and 27.5% were women. The most common causes of death were drowning, being hit by a moving vehicle, and falling while taking a selfie. As a result of their findings, the authors of the publication recommended declaring “No Selfie Zones” in several tourist areas.
In the meantime, Wikipedia maintains a “List of selfie-related injuries and deathsThat includes “serious injuries and deaths where one or more subjects of a selfie were killed or injured before, during or after taking a picture of themselves, where the accident was at least partially attributed to the taking of the picture.” It’s a diverse horrific list of falls, drownings, electrocutions, gunshot wounds, animal mauling, collisions with trains, cars and other vehicles, and various other accidents. And surprise, surprise, this list gets new entries every year.
Keep in mind that both the study and the Wikipedia list rely largely on news reports for their similarities. For every selfie death or serious injury that makes the news, there could be many other injuries and accidents that don’t. At this point, selfie injuries and accidents are largely selfie-reported, meaning there’s no formal mechanism requiring people to report such issues to authorities, at least in the US. In most cases, someone has to voluntarily come forward and say, “Yeah, I was taking a selfie at the time.” And doctors in the emergency department may not routinely ask, “Did you happen to take a selfie then?” So many such selfie-related incidents probably go unreported. People may not be eager to say, ” I’m going to tell everyone about the havoc I caused simply because I wanted more social media “likes.” Such “likes” may not pay for medical bills or bail.
While there’s no selfie police, it’s important to self-check when taking selfies. If you cycle through social media, you probably see a lot of selfies being posted. The temptation, then, may be to say, “Hey, but my life is cool too,” and go out of your way to capture how cool that life is with a selfie that you can then post and get oh-so-valuable comments like “Your life is so great.”
But before taking a selfie, be aware of your surroundings. Ask yourself what your selfie value might be. Is it worth risking injury or damage to get that selfie? Is it really worth, say, causing a crash of 20 riders in the Tour de France just to show other people you were there? Well, many people now know that the spectator who caused the crash was actually at the 2023 Tour de France. And in this case, that’s probably not a good thing for the viewer.
