"You don't die at 30 km per hour."
With this slogan, Rete Città 30 immediately took to the streets to say enough to the daily massacre on the roads and to change the reform of the highway code and the directive of the Minister of Transport, Matteo Salvini, on speed limits in municipalities.
Legambiente, Fiab-Italian Federation of the Environment and Bicycle, Salvaiciclisti, Kyoto Club, Clean Cities Campaign, ASviS, Amodo, Michele Scarponi Foundation, Lorenzo Guarnieri Association, Marco Pietrobono Foundation, Luigi Guccione Foundation and Vivinstrada protest in Piazza Porta Pia, in front of the ministry, to ask for safer, more livable and people-friendly cities.
"The 30 km per hour limit in urban areas guarantees better mobility - say the platform associations - to the benefit of all road users. We say no to a reform of the Highway Code which does not consider speed as the main cause of death on roads and say no to the Città 30 directive proposed by the Minister of Transport", that any 'derogatory limits' to the maximum speed limit of 50km/h be strictly identified and justified street by street.
The associations instead support the Municipalities that have undertaken the transformation towards 30 km per hour from Olbia to Cesena, from Treviso to Bologna to the municipalities of the Teramo coast for over 45 kilometers between Martinsicuro and Silvi.
And they ask Parliament to modify the reform of the highway code under discussion to defend the autonomy of local administrations in terms of sustainable mobility.
"Speed, distraction and failure to give way to pedestrians are the factors that cause 55% of deaths in urban areas. In our country there is one death every three hours and one injured every 2.5 minutes and 50% of the victims are in the city they are pedestrians and cyclists. This is a code red emergency, which must be addressed as soon as possible", say the organizers of the portesta.
Thirty km per hour, they recall, is the speed desired in residential areas by the National Road Safety Plan (Pnrr) Horizon 2030, issued by the Ministry for Sustainable Infrastructure and Mobility after consultation with Parliament in 2022, and by the guidelines of the EU Parliament.
The average speed in Italian cities is around 20 kilometers per hour.
Scientific evidence would show that higher speeds do not have a positive effect on travel times (various studies conducted in cities such as Bologna give, on a 5 km journey, variable results of increases between 10 seconds in rush hour and 2 minutes in situations of free traffic ) but have a negative impact on road safety, traffic flow, air quality and the environment.
Mortality in the event of an impact at over 50 kilometers per hour exceeds 50% and drops to less than 10% below 30 kilometres.
'With cities at 30 km/h, my daughter, who died at 15, would be alive'
"I lost my daughter, Carmen Gattullo, who at the age of 15 was killed on a pedestrian crossing in 2015 in Ostia, while she was going to school on a Monday morning. The person responsible was going at 54 km per hour. My daughter would be alive now, here, if that woman had been going 30 km per hour."
With these words Giuseppina Piantadosi, mother of a road victim, explains the reason for her presence at the Rete Città 30 garrison immediately, in front of the Ministry of Transport, to ask for speed moderation to be introduced into the new highway code.
"The probability of surviving is one in ten for someone who is hit at 50 km per hour, at 30 km per hour you don't die. It's the speed that kills", adds Piantadosi showing the photo of Carmen smiling, printed on her t-shirt.
"My daughter wasn't unlucky, she was fabulous. There's no such thing as bad luck, there's a world and a city that need to change," she adds.
"In Italy, 9 people die every day from road violence and it is the main cause of death among young people. Nobody has children anymore and they leave them to die like this. I wonder what the future is", asks the woman.
Lepore: 'The ministry received a bureaucratic response'
"As the city of Bologna we have set our community and the country the objective of reducing speed to save lives and strengthen road safety. Ours is a political proposal and ours is a political project. With the directive published by the Ministry of Unfortunately, in transport, the answer is bureaucratic, not political."
The mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, said this regarding the MIT directive released yesterday which allows the 30 Zones but asks the municipalities to justify the reduction of speed on a street-by-street basis.
"For us, Città 30 is an idea of the city and of overall road safety that we also propose for political discussion with the Government", adds Lepore.
"The response to the political point we have posed, of putting road safety and the lives of citizens at the centre, cannot overwhelm the Municipalities with stamped papers" adds Lepore specifying that "if that directive were to be applied to the letter, with the spirit of the Government politicians who are telling it, throughout Italy we should start from scratch, while today we must take steps forward for road safety and not steps backwards".
"We will move forward" with Città 30. This was said by the mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, in a meeting at Palazzo d'Accursio, after the Ministry of Transport released a directive that allows the 30 Zones but asks the Municipalities to motivate the road speed reduction on the road.
"We have given ourselves six months to monitor the application data of the Città 30 project, we think that in these months relevant scientific data will arrive to be able to say whether the accident rate has actually dropped, whether there has been a general improvement in the liveability of our neighborhoods or not", explains Lepore.
"We would like these six months to be useful for everyone, even for the Government to discuss with us and the other cities, thanks to the ANCI table", continues Lepore whose intention is to "listen to the citizens and improve the provision".
Ciafani: 'Forward with mobilization alongside the mayors'
"We ask for safety on the roads for those who travel on foot or on two wheels. It is a bit curious to ask for safety from someone who, in the past, as minister of the Conte 1 government, had approved safety decrees which obviously went in a completely opposite direction".
This was stated by the president of Legambiente, Stefano Ciafani, at the presence of the Rete Città 30 immediately in front of the Ministry of Transport.
"The mobilization through the city at 30 kilometers per hour - adds Ciafani - continues and we will strengthen it to support the mayors who are already working in this direction, of any political colour. There is a lot of talk about the mayor of Bologno but there are centre-right mayors, as in Olbia and Treviso, which have already adopted resolutions that go in that direction. The issue of security must not be the prerogative of one side or the other, unfortunately it is becoming the subject of an electoral campaign."
"In addition to supporting all the mayors, starting with the mayor of Bologna Lepore, who will insist on preventing the new MIT directive from invalidating the directives already approved to date, we will mobilize to ensure that the reform of the highway code is not penalizing for those who want to have more safety on the road".
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