After the accident which injured seven children on bicycles this Wednesday morning in La Rochelle, many imagine that the age of the driver, 83 years old, may have played a role. But we don’t know anything about it at the moment, and “we must remain careful”, told us our guest at 7:45 a.m. (to listen again in full by clicking above), the general delegate of the Prévention Routière association, Anne Lavaud. “Age is not an illness, you can drive safely whatever your ageshe recalls. Besides, you have to go among 18/24 year olds to find the same rate of drivers responsible for the accidents in which they are involved as among those aged 75 and over, that is to say 80%. For the rest of the population, 60% are involved in accidents. So you see, age is not in question.” The police or those close to a person can already contact the prefect if they have doubts about their ability to drive, and the prefect then asks a specialized doctor to authorize or not to continue driving. .
What we know is that the children were perfectly secure: helmets and yellow vests, supervised by two chaperones. We also know that the accident took place on a street limited to 30 km/h, as is the entire city of La Rochelle now. And that may have played an important role in limiting the severity of the accident, estimates Anne Lavaud. It calls for the creation of more meeting zones, limited to 20 km/h. Even if many motorists still have difficulty respecting these kinds of measures. “That’s always what we say: we say ‘let’s do nothing because people don’t respect the rules’. But it is obvious that if you have an agglomeration of 50, people will perhaps drive at 55 or 60. If the agglomeration is at 30, they will perhaps ride at 35 or 40. If we are at 20, they will perhaps drive at 25 or 30. So in any case, even if they do not respect the rule collectively, they will lower their speed. And then there is also the social view of others against these motorists who sometimes allow themselves to drive faster.”
“But you know, it’s not trivial: undoubtedly, if the road on which the accident took place had been at 50 km/h, we would be mourning the deaths compared to these children. Because in an accident at 30 km/h between a vehicle and a cyclist or a pedestrian, the risk of death is 10%. The same accident at 50 km/h, the risk of being killed is 80%. And if we go down to 20 km/h, obviously, we also reduce this risk of mortality.”
