Wednesday, December 13, 2017
This is the dashcam of South Korean actor Kim Joo Hyuk in late October in the moments before he suffered some medical problem and crashed, dying later at the hospital. The full clip starts at 0:21.
After traffic goes through the intersection, pay attention to the black SUV to the right and then the black sedan that passes on the right. That's when Kim starts having (or noticing) problems and is either trying to get to the side of the road or has already started losing control of his functioning. It looks like he probably sideswipes the black sedan (not caught on the dashcam), who is probably honking like mad (no audio), alerting the SUV in front, who presumably seeing the collision in his mirror, steps on the gas and speeds away to not get involved.
As Kim's control further deteriorates, the cam shows a black sedan (presumably the one he hit) come up on the left, partially blocking Kim's car. Presumably, logically, the sedan driver only knows that he's been hit and Kim's car didn't show any sign of stopping because of the accident, and therefore he wants to prevent Kim from leaving the scene. That's when Kim loses all control of his functions and presumably his foot falls heavy on the accelerator leading him to hit the sedan again, careen towards the sidewalk and crashing. The last image before cutting off is Kim's vehicle flipping over. He had to be extracted before being sent to the hospital. From my very limited layman's experience and knowledge, I might profer he suffered either a seizure, heart attack or stroke. The autopsy was inconclusive.
What's sad and profound to me is that the dashcam includes the last things Kim Joo Hyuk saw of this world. He probably didn't wake up that morning and consider he might die that day. He may have, but I daresay most of us don't. He certainly didn't get into his car thinking he was about to die.
Everything was going normal until it wasn't. A late afternoon commute, driving from one place to another as he does every day. That's the profound part of the clip, not the accident but the normalcy leading up to it.
Death is a universal experience, but so are the moments of each of our lives leading up to dying that the dashcam so poignantly captures. And since we generally don't know when or how death comes, we don't know when those last moments of normalcy are being experienced. So breathe.
Then again, there was Elvis who died on the crapper.