Refusal to comply, rodeos, drugs… The road, a reflection of the “wildness” of society

Should we systematically refer drivers whose dangerous behavior has cost the lives of victims to court? This question, absent a few years ago, is now recurrent in debates, as road violence has worsened in France. At a time when the number of deaths has fallen considerably on the network, going from 18,034 in 1972 to 3,167 in 2023, the road paradoxically becomes the place of all the dangers, where the transgression of prohibitions goes so far as to provoke the ‘irreparable. We thus take the wheel under the influence of drugs, like the comedian Pierre Palmade, tried on November 20 in Melun; or drunk, like the driver who killed the son of star chef Yannick Alléno, whose trial has just been held in Paris. Or you throw your motorcycle onto a pedestrian crossing by doing a wheelie, even if it means killing a 7-year-old girl, like this summer in Vallauris (Alpes-Maritimes).

Faced with the madness of…