Hundreds of people rallied across France on Saturday, urging an end to “motorized violence” and calling for measures to ease tensions on the busy streets of the French capital, days after a driver crushed a 27-year-old cyclist to death.
Nearly a thousand demonstrators in Paris, many with bicycles, called for reconciliation as tensions have risen in the battle for street space in the city center, according to police figures.
Some seethed with anger, while others mourned, waving banners that read “less speed, more tenderness,” “walk or pedal through calm streets” and “stop motorized violence.”
“At some point people have to calm down, the road belongs to no one and everyone,” Veronique, who declined to give her surname, told AFP.
“It could have been me, a car is a weapon,” says the protester in her thirties, who rides an electric bicycle for work every day.
“Motorized violence is deadly. We want the authorities to really understand this issue,” said Anne Monmarche, president of the Paris en Selle organization, which advocates better conditions for cyclists.
Paul Varry, who was killed by an SUV driver in central Paris on Tuesday after an altercation between the two, was an active member of the Paris en Selle group.
Monmarche is part of a delegation that will meet Transport Minister Francois Durovray on Monday.
“The idea is to listen to proposals from civil society players who represent cyclists with respect, to build future policies together,” his office told AFP.
– ‘In shock’ –
Varry died in Paris’ wealthy eighth arrondissement after being run over by a motorist with whom he had had an argument moments earlier.
The 52-year-old driver of the SUV, whose teenage daughter was also in the car, was arrested at the scene. He has been charged with murder.
Emotions ran high at the Paris gathering in honor of Varry.
He “dedicated his time to carefully and clearly explaining why greater safety for cyclists was needed in road planning,” said Ariel Weil, the mayor of Paris’s central districts, who attended the meeting.
After a minute’s silence and prolonged applause, Varry’s mother said she was “in shock” and demanded the perpetrator be “punished”.
Rallies took place in cities across France after organizations promoting cycling issued calls.
Varry “looks a bit like the martyr of our cause,” said Aude Fouchet, 52, who took part in a rally in the southwestern city of Toulouse.
– ‘Daily arguments’ –
In Nantes, western France, protester Arthur Desmidt said Varry’s killing was unnecessary.
“We are happily talking about it today, but because it was in the middle of Paris. In rural areas, for example, many incidents remain invisible,” said the 29-year-old.
Most of the 226 cyclists killed on French roads in 2023 were in rural or urban peripheries.
“People should stop treating a car as an extension of themselves and not overestimating it in everyday life,” says Barbara Delattre, a secondary school teacher in Nice.
Many, like Nicole Penot in Strasbourg, denounced the “daily fights” along the way, adding that “we need to rethink our way of sharing public space.”
About 150 people gathered in Amiens, northern France, where a cyclist was fatally run over by a garbage truck in January.
Meanwhile, 200 people united in Bordeaux, where three riders died last year and the Velo-Cite group used the term ‘cyclicide’.
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