They are out and letting you know. “They”, because they are almost exclusively males. Full of testosterone, their feet to the floor, they are too proud to show off their big engine and to release the power they have under the hood with a burst of gas. This is particularly true in the month of June, when summer sees the terraces blossom and life now takes place outside. It becomes imperative, it seems, to parade around squares and on busy streets, where we will be seen and heard.
Because the internal combustion engine has never lived up to its name so well. It has become a fashion: accelerate suddenly and go in peaks… until the next traffic light. Make your engine roar and detonate your exhaust, without regard for others. Powerful scooters and other big bikes, let’s not talk about them. Manufacturers have clearly not focused on vehicles adapted to the city. It has long been an enigma that racing cars are designed to reach illegal speeds. But we are wondering more than ever about the laxity of the public authorities in the face of the accelerator madmen.
The influence of individual motorized traffic on our collective spaces is in itself an aberration, unfortunately defended tooth and nail by the automobile lobby. Violent behavior, in terms of noise and speed, enjoys incomprehensible impunity. We do not feel the beginning of a political will in terms of installing urban radars, large-scale controls in the neighborhoods which are subject to the rodeo, dissuasive sanctions capable of discouraging drivers from harming living together. With the sunny days, night and day, in increasingly dense neighborhoods, are we condemned to suffer in silence?
