Hacker News Reader

Comment by russfink | Hacker News Reader

Expert piece of writing: “The enormous impact had torn the engine mount and front axle from the SLR’s chassis and sent both of these large pieces scything through a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.“

Scything. Brilliant.

View on HN

They may have lifted that from the Wikipedia article, linked below. See the “collision” section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster

Gruesome, maybe they are taking too much pleasure in being so graphic. Should tone it down.

Nobody takes pleasure in it. Motorsport is something where people generally respect, acknowledge and understand the inherent dangers associated with it.

That's just good writing there.

I don’t believe that Motorsport audiences do generally acknowledge that they could be killed by flying pieces of cars, though. They acknowledge that the drivers are at risk.

I did not say what you are saying I said.

Motorsport audiences in almost every discipline I know can rattle off a litany of safety incidences that have happened over the past 100 years. My point is that we do not shy away from talking about it because the presence of danger in this sport in general is well known.

I see it as having a wide enough range of vocabulary to be able to pick the most succinctly descriptive word for the situation. Brilliantly done in this case.

to me, a scythe implies a handle, leverage, etc.

the word "mow" would have been better, evocative of lopping all the tops off without the wrong mechanical image.

Scythe implies a large swinging blade, cutting down everything in its path. Also Death carries a scythe, so that evokes another good image.

I think that sentences accurately conveys the incredible violence and destruction of the crash, which killed 83 people and injured 120 more.

If you view it all as statistics sure but how would you feel hearing about a loved one’s death as getting scythed?

After 70 years I think it’s ok.

I disagree, deadbabe.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com