Last year a gunman opened fire in a regional parliament, killing 14 officials; a fiery truck collision shut down the St. Gotthard Tunnel in the Alps; and business mistakes brought down the national airline, Swissair.
In a few images, other photographers are visible at work, with bulky tripod cameras focused on railroad cars in motion or aftermaths of collisions spilling down hillsides.
Quick ball is the Holy Grail in any game of rugby, but particularly against a side like South Africa who will look to dominate the collisions, slow down the supply of ball to the Scottish half-backs and smother the attack.
He conducts downtown tours and has brought thousands of people over the years to Clifton's to experience the collision of down-home and theatricality.
But, he acknowledged, "that's very, very hard to do; it's inevitable that there will be collisions down the road".
"In about 98% of cases [the collision] was down to driver action, it was nothing to do with the cyclist".
That collision pushed rocks down, transforming them, and pushed others up.
And indeed, in the opening scene, before the reader can even get the main characters straight, the guests at the Crosses' St. Patrick's Day party hear the sounds of a collision and look down to see a trail of flashing police cruisers on the road below.
As the debris particles from the cosmic ray collision cascade down through the atmosphere, their interactions with each other and Earth's magnetic field produce a radio signal that is detectable by LOFAR's antennas.
It was a time of thrilling collisions that broke down the barriers between artforms.
