Get well soon, world.

I've been wanting to use a joke on my twitter about whether Robert Kubica's operations are going to be like Britney Spear's 'knee surgery' and he'll turn up at a circuit somewhere with a suspiciously straight nose and perky pec implants. I've been wanting to use it, but there's an air of 'too soon' about the place. Perhaps I'll hang on and see whether he loses his hand or not. I think that should be a solid rule of thumb. Better call that something else though if the old boy does have the thing whipped off.

Terrible accident, his little smash in the Italian mountains. It's a bit of a cliche to point this out, but there's this thing on the back of motorsport tickets that says you might die (and you never get that in the cinema) and it's true - racing drivers know the risks and that's what they contend with when strap themselves into overpowered, underprotected machines that propel them along at outrageous speeds.

That's all given to me, though. The thing that confuses me at points like this is the simpering sympathy that emerges - everyone has to say how awful it is and how truly sorry they are. Messages of support appear on British websites the Polish speaker is never going to look at, and fans are encouraged to send in their wishes to various outlets, as if the guy gives two shits about the fact that some guy from Coventry wishes him well whilst tendons up and down his body are splayed all over his hospital bed and his bones look like pulled Christmas crackers.

I'm not, say, a fricking Nazi, so there's a reasonable assumption that I do wish anyone well who has been in a car accident that saw the roadside crash barrier inserted through the front of the car via the engine. But do I need to tell anyone? I get annoyed when the Prime Minister has to say how sorry he is that someone mildly consequential has died just because he's supposed to. Yeah, and? They're dead.

These things are most often for ourselves - to assuage the rising impotence at bad things that happen in the world that we could hardly influence were we even there. It's an awful gyp though - a bit like poppy fascism writ large. Wear a ribbon, give to charity, update your Facebook status with a pre-masticated statement you copy and paste. Wail, gnash, wear black, tell everyone how sorry you are.

Do you know what? I'd rather be the guy in the rally car.