5:45 p.m. is the time Paul Varry was killed on Tuesday by a motorist who entered the cycle path on Boulevard Malesherbes (8th arrondissement). This Saturday, the young man’s relatives and a crowd of cyclists gathered on the Place de la République in Paris and in 45 towns in Île de France to pay tribute to him.
The Paris police headquarters recorded more than a thousand participants in this moment of contemplation. It is also an opportunity, for many cyclists, to express their anger. “I am outraged. I have been cycling in Paris for ten years and I feel violence against cyclists on a daily basis”says Julie.
Road violence
Just after the minute of silence, Paul Varry’s mother took the microphone and confided her pain: “I lost my son, our life is destroyed, we are in shock”she said, despite the emotion. She also says she hopes “the driver be punished” so that “this carnage will not happen again”she continues.
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Beyond those close to them, many participants say they identified with the cyclist. “Paul could have been me, it could have been any cyclist,” assures Frédéric. Based in Montreuil (Seine Saint-Denis), he says he has been “threatened with death” several times by motorists: “When a car – which gets impatient behind you – honks the horn and presses the accelerator and the clutch at the same time it means ‘I can let go so I can kill you’; he believes.
This violence, reported by all the cyclists met by France Bleu Paris, will be at the heart of the meeting organized on Monday October 21 between the main cycling associations and the Minister of Transport, François Durovray.
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France
