At least four crashes today, and some will have major consequences: Primoz Roglic, one of the favorites, lost over a minute on his main GC competitors, and may not be able to start tomorrow. Caleb Ewan is (I think) out of the race; he crashed with just a few hundred meters to go, in the middle of a 65-km/hour sprint. He was on the pavement for a long time, and I don't think he could have crossed the line under his own power. That crash was partly his fault -- he tried to pass another rider on the inside, but there wasn't enough room between the rider and the barriers -- but can also be blamed partly on the course design: putting an S-curve into the final few hundred meters of a sprint finish of a flat stage is just asking for trouble. One of the earlier crashes was (in my opinion) very definitely in large part due to the race design: a sharp left-hand turn after a downhill section, just 8 km from the finish of a flat stage, when lots of sprinters' teams would be pushing hard.
In its first three stages, this edition of the Tour has lost several top riders, either completely, or de facto, due to the time they've already lost. I guess it could be exciting if one is a fan of some unknown cyclist who will now have a chance to shine in the spotlight, but it doesn't fill this regular viewer with joy :-(
Edit: apparently Ewan did cross the finish line, the last of the riders to do so. I wonder if he just walked that last few hundred meters ... That means he _was_ officially still in the race at that point. However, I've just read that he has been diagnosed with a broken collarbone, so he's out for good now. Sigh.