It is inappropriate to speak of road safety, of accidents, of truck-bicycle collisions, cars against bikes, van against bike crashes: these are all words that distance us from the truth and the gravity of what is happening on our roads.

Because when a cyclist is killed on the road it is never simply an accident and it is not merely a road safety problem. The person who hit them always has a NAME and a SURNAME and, well before the impact, made a series of choices: overtaking without sufficient space, failing to slow down, getting distracted, using a phone, running a red light, driving at a speed incompatible with the context. They may not have chosen to kill, but they chose to accept a grave risk on another person's life.

Cyclists killed on the roads are not victims of accidents, a term derived from the Latin incidens, meaning "something that happens," but are the consequence of choices of conduct and behavior, of people who decide to act while accepting the risk of causing someone else's death.

The cyclist, unlike all other road users, is completely dependent on the decisions and conduct of others, to whom they entrust their own life: when they overtake them, when they cut them off at a roundabout, when driving the wrong way they overtake another vehicle invading the opposite lane and we find ourselves facing them, when out of play, spite or frustration they brush past them.

So, since the beginning of 2026, while politicians compete for credit for reforms and proclamations, we have reached 106 deaths, 7 alone in the week of the first heat wave. And every time a cyclist is killed on the road we read the same words: tragedy, fatality, accident.

Adele's death shocked everyone, and reopens wounds, like the recent deaths of Sara, Matteo, Mattia, Francesco, Jacopo, Silvia, Federico, Matilda, Leonardo, Tiziana, Mirko, Cristiano, Gabriele, Leonardo, Viola.

The killing of these young people and all the other victims has nothing to do with fatality, but is the fruit of normalized violence against those who choose to move by bicycle.

Speaking generically of "safety problem" often ends up diluting individual responsibilities, attenuating the weight of the conduct that led to someone's death and its legal consequences.

Those who kill a cyclist, in most cases, will not serve sentences proportionate to the severity of the damage caused, will not answer economically in a direct way for the consequences and will return to driving after a relatively short period. This is a reality that should question anyone who believes in the value of human life.

Let us realize that the language that follows the killings of cyclists is entirely inadequate and that the issue also stems from the law, which does not intervene as it should, which continues to wink at motorists, certainly more numerous and politically more relevant than cyclists.

And here come the various "yes, but you cyclists too...," which immediately absolve conduct that should have no excuses but only aggravating factors.

And here is the cultural problem.

So it occurs to me to make a parallel: when people began to speak of femicide it was not simply a matter of changing a word, but recognizing that behind a series of deaths existed a social and cultural phenomenon that could no longer be told as a sum of isolated cases.

I am not even attempting to equate femicide and cyclisticide, but I invite reflection, because in both cases we are dealing with phenomena that for years are described as individual fatalities, when instead they are consequences of a culture that accepts and tolerates these behaviors.

In the case of cyclists too, there exists a culture that normalizes risk, that considers those who pedal an obstacle that has no right to be on the road, blames them, minimizing dangerous conduct and absolving those who endanger others' lives.

"Cyclisticide" is a provocation, but the question is how many of the deaths that occur on our roads are still told as simple accidents when in reality they are the product of a road culture that does not recognize the right of cyclists to exist, to be respected, to not be put in danger of life so as not to lift one's foot off the accelerator pedal for a few seconds?

It is an invitation to all people who ride bicycles to unite, to not let this cry remain isolated.

Avv. Federico Balconi

Founder APS ZEROSBATTI