It’s mathematics: when a road is constructed, they start a new account for the dead who will subsequently be remembered with bunches of flowers, memorials, stones, photos. You can witness this anywhere. Tiny cemeteries on the road. About 7,000 people a year die on our roads, almost 20 a day. And a shocking figure of about 70,000 injured, many with permanent injuries. The provincial newspapers always start off with the accounts of deaths of motorcyclists who hit a pole or who have a full frontal crash on a state road. In the last 30 years, adding up a few figures means that more than 200,000 people have died.

Nobody says a word. The car companies have advertising that always emphasises the cars that are ever more powerful, that invite you to exceed the speed limits. Excess speed is one of the main causes of accidents. They make such a fuss for a couple of joints, and they don’t do any regulation of antisocial and murderous advertising.

We don’t insist that vehicle manufacturers make vehicles with speed limits. The media report this news with placid indifference. The institutions, instead of promoting decentralisation and tele-working, are developing centralisation and mobility. It’s the beauty of the economy. The economy of the car, of petrol with State taxes, of finance to buy a car. Economic deaths that are worth a lot less than war deaths.

Little is said about them. Just superficially. In a way they brought it on themselves. Quantity versus quality. Advertising for cars kills more than anti-personnel mines.

Well then I want the par condicio {equal access rule}. I too want to be able to talk about the national road networks (OUR national networks), with an advertising spot that lets people understand that speed is violence, that it is a myth of the past, of older people, finished, of those that find gratification with a spanner rather than with a vagina. Yes, I want to get back to the TV for 30 seconds, straight after every deadly advertisement, to remind people, especially the young ones that life is something else, somewhere else. Not in rubber tyres, in engine wheels, in 220 an hour, in four wheel drives.
The speed maniacs are poor things, but the real problem is that they don’t know that.

PS. “Speed is the major assassin on the roads and according to the European Union (EU) reducing the average driving speed by 3 km/h would save about 5,000-6,000 lives a year and would avoid about 120,000-140,000 accidents saving € 20,000,000,000 in costs. By increasing the speed in urban centres from 30 km/h to 50 km/h increases the risk of death for pedestrians 8 fold.” From Wikipedia.