We are a month away from Christmas, and as if by some dark ritual, cars seem to multiply on the roads. Haste, nervousness, and impatience increase. The cold begins to bite and becomes the perfect pretext to take refuge in the supposed comfort of the car, while for those who stubbornly continue to believe in soft mobility, these are the most difficult days of the year: days when we become even more invisible, even more vulnerable, irremediably a minority.

In this tragedy, I cannot see causes other than the most bitter and simple truth: a 23-year-old young woman, precisely on the international day against violence towards women, was run over while making a choice that should be protected and respected. She was a cyclist. A girl who had decided to move in the cleanest, kindest, most coherent way with the world we would like to leave to those who come after us. She had chosen the bike to breathe the city, to experience the freedom of two wheels, certainly not to meet death.

Instead, this choice became a sentence inflicted by those who got behind the wheel without responsibility, without attention, without any respect for the lives of others. Today my heart, my pain, and my anger go to Viola - 23 years old, I repeat - who was pedaling on a bike lane in a city that was trying to improve itself, to become an example, and who instead finds herself paying with her blood for the criminal conduct of a single individual. A single responsible person. A single murderer.

Because not looking at the road, not paying attention, not driving with the prudence that law and common sense impose is equivalent to shooting into a crowd. It means pressing a trigger and leaving the choice of victim to chance. It means demonstrating a total indifference towards the lives of others. And this is what we can no longer accept. This is what, as a community, as human beings, we must finally call by its true name.

Federico Balconi, www.zerosbatti.it

photo from Viola Mazzotti's LinkedIn profile