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The immense, infinite and profound pain that a road accident causes cannot be described. But can it be “quantified” in some way? According to Giordano Biserni, president of Asaps, the largest Italian road safety association, it is possible. A courageous theory because, when you talk about feelings, there are no meters, units of measurement, nothing. But… But from an attempt to quantify pain, insights emerge that we cannot ignore. Ideas that are all in a letter, which Giordano Biserni sent us and which we are publishing in full.
To fully understand what the pain of losing a loved one is, you have to experience it.
This is what is unfortunately happening to me too after I lost my life partner on Christmas Eve, a partner for a lifetime. No, you cannot describe a vice that grips your stomach, your throat and disconnects your brain, a sort of dark corridor where sweet memories that you know are unrepeatable intersect. But also uncertainty for a future that you can't even outline in a sketch.
I apologize for this introduction being strictly personal for once.
But it was necessary to arrive at the reasoning that I want to try to do despite the extremely rumpled condition that I am experiencing.
In these days of great pain I have asked myself the question several times: but 3,159 families of road victims experienced equally great pain in 2022. Families who have lost a son, a father, a mother, a brother, a grandfather, in a road crash, which in many cases then sees the crying of innocent victims.
I calculated that for every victim, especially a young one, there is a sudden loss of life for at least 30 closest relatives: parents, children, siblings, grandparents, and often even true friends.
Then I reasoned that the street causes enormous pain for almost 100,000 people in a single year, a sort of average city that annihilates itself in mourning. Not to mention the injuries often with irreversible physical consequences.
At least 20,000 in a year. And the small group that will have to take care of these seriously injured people directly or indirectly is around 5-6 family members. Another 100,000 indirect road victims.
However, this undeclared war often sees as its protagonists not the killer streets, not the murderous fog, but human behavior that accepts the risk which is then projected onto others with arrogant overestimation of one's own capabilities.
The road, as I have already written, is the only place in which a drunk, drugged, distracted person traveling at excessive speeds can issue a death sentence, immediately carried out on the spot, unappealable against an innocent person, enjoying almost total impunity.
Here let's think about it carefully please.
Let's think! We do not yet have the official data on road victims for 2023. But we do have data from the ASAPS Observatories. What do they tell us? They tell us that in the past year we have had 440 pedestrians hit and killed on the roads, 197 cyclists who no longer reached the finish line of a symbolic Giro d'Italia. We counted 1,312 victims in accidents over the weekend alone, of which 442 were motorcyclists. Then there are the victims of all the other days of the week to count. Ah, we must also add 50 children who lost their lives on the road in 2023, certainly innocent of them! Leaving parents and grandparents in boundless pain.
But imagine, a loved one leaves home and never returns due to an accident! Is it acceptable for this to happen over 3,000 times in a year? Throwing at least 100,000 people into the deepest pain? Without even having had the chance to say goodbye to your loved one.
Well, in my case I had a notable advantage. I managed to say hello to Gabriella and shook her hand.
Today I consider it a privilege.
Giordano Biserni, president of Asaps, association of traffic police friends
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