 In both the story and the art exhibition, Ballard dealt with the sexual potential of car crashes, a preoccupation he also explored in a short film in which he appeared with Gabrielle Drake in 1971.His fascination with the topic culminated in the novel "Crash" in 1973.The main character of "Crash" is called James Ballard and lives in Shepperton, though other biographical details do not match the writer, and curiosity about the relationship between the character and his author increased when Ballard suffered a serious automobile accident shortly after completing the novel.