A cyclist, in the municipal area of Erdre et Gesvres, western France, on October 22, 2024. JéRéMIE LUSSEAU/HANS LUCAS FOR LE MONDE“Stop motorized violence.” Such is the name of a campaign launched by the French Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB) following the death of Paul Varry, a 27-year-old cyclist. According to the initial findings, Varry had been deliberately struck by an SUV driver while riding in the bike lane in Paris on October 15. The campaign seeks to gather testimonies from cyclists about similar incidents.
This tragedy has brought the issue of “motorized violence” to the forefront of public debate on transport, which had previously focused on infrastructure and environmental concerns. Olivier Schneider, co-president of the FUB, whose call for cyclists’ testimonies about their experiences of road violence received 818 responses in two days, seemed surprised by the scale of the phenomenon. “We’ve been advocating measures to limit road insecurity for a long time, but we’d never targeted intentional violence until now,” he said.
Public authorities have also begun to understand the scope of the issue, which goes beyond the usual requirement to “share the road.” On October 21, the transport minister, François Durovray, met with cyclists’ associations, who had been eagerly awaiting a response from him, after he took four days to react to Varry’s death. He announced a “mission against violence on the road,” to be entrusted to a “qualified” person.
The idea has become a cliché: Sharing roadways in congested urban areas generates conflict between an increasing number of cyclists, pedestrians – whose dedicated spaces are sometimes sacrificed to cycling projects – and motorists, who struggle to accept losing their monopoly of the road. However, beyond these frustrations, year after year, road safety statistics reveal a harsh reality: Cars and their drivers are responsible for the vast majority of fatalities.
Incomplete awareness raising efforts
According to the French Road Safety Observatory (ONISR), “in 2023, 221 cyclists were killed (…) up +18% from 2019.” Among pedestrians, there were 438 deaths in accidents with a third party in 2023, down by 10% from 2019. Notably, when pedestrians or cyclists die in an accident with a third party, in 72% of cases, that third party was driving a car or commercial vehicle.
This rise in casualties is, at least in part, a consequence of the significant rise in bicycle use, which jumped by 20% between 2020 and 2021, according to a national bicycle traffic platform (PNF). This increase was encouraged by the government for environmental reasons. Former prime minister Elisabeth Borne started a bicycle plan, with a budget of €465 million over four years, in 2018, when she was transport minister. Upon becoming prime minister, she expanded the plan, pledging €1.25 billion between 2023 and 2028.
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