"Killer roads on the island, but nobody does anything"

"Dear Union,

I am the father of Simone, a boy of almost twenty who lost his life on the roads of Sardinia this summer on his beloved motorcycle.

Since that moment for our whole family, life has collapsed and I do not add other words, because only those who live or have experienced such a moment can understand ... there is no room for imagination when there are such strong bonds and tragedies so important.

As surely happens to other people in our situation, we ask ourselves what has been done or not done to deserve this, but without the ifs and thes but often we also want to understand better what happened.

As a lost father, immediately after my son's tragedy, I gathered a bit of energy and strength to try to understand what could have happened on that cursed night of July 19th at half past one in the morning, in the long salt marshes of Quartu Sant 'Elena. I state that for my work I have now been living outside Sardinia for more than twelve years, but I still have a home and family there, without having, however, any idea of what nightlife could be in the third largest city in Sardinia.

In particular, I wanted to understand it by observing the places of the accident and therefore going on the streets of Viale Colombo and Poetto which in summer become the connection and the gateway to the city to places of entertainment and tourism for many people, as well as a real artery of the city traffic of the metropolitan area towards the city of Cagliari.

Well, in such an important context, where I expected that in 2021 an area could be found more than adequate and ready for the tourist and city flow, gradually growing over the years, always in the face of declared tourist ambitions as a lever of the local economy , I had to note with bitterness a sense of emptiness and total abandonment so as to leave me truly astonished and bewildered.

As a father who does not resign himself to being told only that his son, in a straight road like that of the long salt pan, "crashes" into a guard rail, perhaps and only because he made the wrong maneuver or was not prudent, I tried to do some more evaluation.

Day after day and night after night, I spent the whole summer recording the behavior of the users of those roads, the surveillance and custody of those places and everything that surrounds such a complex and articulated traffic system.

In the meantime, unfortunately, in just one month, another person died in those same streets and at least one other major accident occurred with the overturning of a car that also knocked down a traffic light system….

To synthesize and rely on the imprudence of road users alone it seems and it seemed too simplistic and my personal feeling and impression is that of wanting to pull a blanket that is too short that leaves the feet uncovered.

Starting by highlighting that I am not a road safety expert, I wonder looking in detail at the places where the accidents took place, but it is possible that only me and some others are aware of some evidence and dangers that are not so hidden from to suggest that we can spend the summer of 2021, perhaps yet another, without doing anything and not even downstream of the accidents that have occurred!

I was even more saddened when I read, in the last part of the summer, some articles in various local newspapers, in which it was highlighted that in the summer of 2021 too many accidents had occurred on the roads in question and therefore some prevention systems had to be restored. which speed cameras, make a critical analysis of the most dangerous roads, safeguard and secure cyclists by connecting cycle paths (they have been like this for decades ..) etc ... .. but first what has been done and then how soon will we do?

To these bitter reflections I have not been able to give myself a concrete answer and I hope to have it in the coming months.

For the moment I need to add only one more consideration: public opinion is scandalized every time by death in the workplace and goes on an exasperated hunt for 'bad employers', but in the meantime it mourns the victims of the road as inevitable and mostly the result of their responsibility and their imprudence. But who controls and has to watch where it is?

Is a road sign indicating the speed limit enough to be safe and ensure safety on the roads?

I believe not, because still in 2021, the evidence shows us that road safety is made up of many components including the prevention and dissuasion of potentially dangerous behavior and it seems to me that all this, unfortunately, in this terrible summer does not there has been.

But I also wonder how it is possible to accept that in a city that wants to have important tourist ambitions, such as to make it a strong point, it can be allowed that on the only road that leads citizens and tourists to the most beautiful naturalistic places such as the sea, the park area of the salt pans and the summer entertainment venues there is a passive acceptance of the facts.

In particular, by scrolling through photos and images of these places, collected with so much effort, we can find: pedestrians who go on cycle paths and vice versa both at pace and running, cars parked on cycle paths and zebra stripes, that speed limits they are only written, that scooters circulate in an undisciplined way and are even abandoned on the cycle paths, that bicycles move in the wrong direction or off the cycle paths without light signals at night, that you cross the densely trafficked roads in the most varied points both day and night. night!

I hope that, also for this cry of infinite pain and suffering, these places, where our loved ones and ourselves circulate daily, there will be profound safety reassessments both in light of the best rules and practices now available for some time and of the changes both in the number and type of vehicles in transit. It hurts a lot and also anger to see that for years the same places have maintained the same infrastructures such as the rotten and devastated road barriers both by the marine environment in which they are installed and by accidents that have occurred over time, cycle paths that end in nothingness becoming in some cases dirt roads for mixed use of bicycles and pedestrians, presence of embankments such as marble and concrete steps with sharp and sometimes disconnected edges that have no particular function other than to aggravate the falls of some unfortunate user who can ruin them above, presence of shrubs, waste and gravel such as to suggest a total abandonment and so on.

Finally and I conclude, I wonder: it is possible that with all the speed deterrents, the guardrails save motorcyclists and many other devices that the best technologies make available today, we still have to ask ourselves whether or not it is appropriate to install them, giving justifications such as the many various priorities or sometimes economic reasons?

My answer, in any case, is and always will be that we must do everything to avoid continuing to cry on the graves of our loved ones ”.

Marcello Perra

***

You can send your letters, reports and multimedia contents to redazioneweb@unionesarda.it specifying your name and surname and a telephone number. In the subject of the email we ask you to insert the words #Cara Unione.

(The editorial staff only gives a voice to citizens who express opinions, report disservices or anomalies and does not necessarily share the content)