Editorial: Language of death too common

Death has its own language on our roads.

In our newsroom, we try to decipher it as it's passed on from sources in the community. Police call in a dead body as a "10-0", fire crews refer to it as a "K-41", ambulance staff as a "status-0". It's a type of macabre road code.

But it's there for discretion. I'd also suggest it's a coping mechanism for the brave folk in emergency services left to literally pick up the pieces; a way of dehumanising a grisly task.

When a "10-0" communication comes into the office, we attempt to find the location. Photographers and reporters scramble to the scene, witnesses and police are spoken to, tomorrow's lead is born.

A few months back, I attended a night-time crash in Hastings. No one was moving in either vehicle after a T-bone collision at over 100km/h. A car's horn was blaring, stuck on full noise as a result of the impact. The driver's femur had smashed through his pelvis. As I flipped out my camera, a police officer yelled at me: "Show some dignity or I'll move you on."

At such scenes, we walk an arbitrary line drawn by the officers attending. I didn't argue. My camera offered no solace, no prayer, no morphine. It's tough to maintain any illusion of dignity.

I kept shooting while emergency services did what I'd seen them do scores of times, interfacing with each other, ducking and scurrying. They were like participants in a macabre dance, a sophisticated puzzle solving itself under the flashing red-and-blue mood lights.

Back in the newsroom, we scan photographs, smudge out licence plates and anything deemed sensitive. Then we hunt the identification of the victim. Sometimes, we can only wait until a name is officially released.

In the ensuing hours, police carry out the dreaded task of informing family members. The code for that is a "2-A".

And sometime after that, we're asked to do the job we hate above all else. We don't have a code for it, we just call it a "death knock". We stand on the doorsteps of complete strangers, namely bereaved dads, mums, sons, daughters and siblings of the deceased. Again, we offer no solace, prayers or morphine, we're just hoping for a few lines about the deceased, who they were and a photograph.

Every death-knock is different. I've had a full beer can thrown at me, hugs from a stranger lasting more than a minute and comments such as that earlier "show some dignity".

There's been seven deaths on our province's roads during the past three weeks. That's a "10-0", a "K-41", a "status-0", a "2-A" and a death knock every 72 hours.

All journalists are taught that human death has the highest news value. The dignity comes with the realisation that it's not death that has the highest value, but life.