Irony

Paul Walker, star of the Fast and Furious film series, died in a fiery crash, as the car that he was riding in slammed into a tree. The police think that speed was a factor in the crash. Oh, the irony.

The Fast and Furious movies glamorized riding around in heavily modified small cars and street racing them.

The first of the movies was released on June 22, 2001.

In 2001, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that police listed street racing as a factor in 135 fatal crashes. The total was up from 72 street-racing-related fatalities reported in 2000.

The city of San Diego prosecuted 147 illegal street racing cases in 1999, 161 in 2000, and 290 in 2001.

The numbers of street racing related deaths increased in 2001, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2011: each and every year that a new Fast and Furious movie was released.

That's Hollywood: Glamorizing things like street racing and killing people, and then claiming that your movies don't influence people's behavior, but charging big bucks for product placement because seeing your product in the movies makes people want to buy it.