Baudrillard believes Crash to be the first great novel of the universe of simulation, "the one which we will all be concerned--a symbolic universe, but one which, through a sort of reversal of the mass-mediate substance (neon, concrete, car, erotic machinery), appears as if traversed by an intense force of initiation (119)." All throughout the novel, bodies and technology are combined, seduced, inextricable (114). Perhaps this was Ballard's intension for the novel. In the introduction, Ballard warns against, "That brutal, erotic, overlit realm that beckons more and more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape." He is warning against the temptation of the universe of simulation, where attempts to expediate life through technology result in a gradual enslavement, as in the case of Vaughan. His obsession with crashes eventually destroys him. This is the idea of the simulacra--the copy without the original. The universe of simulation seeks to destroy its creator to create a new world, a universe of simulacra. Ballard warns that Vaughan is the first victim in this new universe.

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