Italy outraged by train accident selfie

Young man posed in front of first aiders
treating a woman struck by a train in Piacenza

Reaction

The young man in white shorts appears to throw a “V for victory”
sign as he stands on the platform and angles his phone towards
emergency personnel tending to a bleeding woman lying on the tracks
at Piacenza station, in northern Italy.

The man was stopped by railway police officers
on the scene and made to delete the image. However, it is the photo
of the photo – taken on 26 May by journalist Giorgio Lambri – which
has proven even more shocking.

Since Lambri first published the image on
Sunday, it has set off something of a moral panic in Italy, with
soul-searching opinion pieces questioning whether social media has
warped society’s sense of decency.

The accident on the tracks may have been bloody and
horrifying, but the “truly gruesome scene” was that taking place on
the platform, says Italian news website Quotidiano.

For many commentators, the astonishing image of
a young man happily posing in front of a grievously injured woman
offered a striking juxtaposition of online connectivity and
disconnect from real-life horror.

Writing for the magazine Famiglia Cristiana, psychotherapist Alberto
Pellai said the incident captured the moment “where narcissism
marries desensitisation”.

The Piacenza selfie is an extreme example of an
“insane modern craze of documenting one’s presence as a grinning
witness at every moment of life, whether tragic or comic”, writes
La Stampa’s Gianluca Nicoletti, letting real
life “run behind us like a film reel”.

The woman injured in the accident, a Canadian
national, was taken to hospital, where one of her legs was
amputated.

The cause of the accident is still being
investigated, but local media report that she is thought to have
fallen onto the tracks while disembarking from a train after a door
opened on the wrong side.