Title: Why Do a Thousand Children Killed on the Asphalt Receive Less Attention Than Garlasco?
Image: Representative archival image of a road traffic accident (no direct reference to the events narrated in the article)
Over the past two decades, Italy has been captivated by televised reconstructions and endless debates over the forensic details of individual criminal cases—starting with the 2007 Garlasco murder. Meanwhile, a far more extensive and systematic slaughter on the roads unfolded before our eyes, almost entirely in silence from institutions and talk shows.
The Numbers Behind the Silence of an Endless Massacre
On May 13, 2026, in Bergamo, a 9-year-old child was killed. Or rather, he was struck and killed by the driver of a car. He wasn’t killed by a “monster” from prime time, but became a victim of a system that considers road deaths an inevitable side effect of private mobility. He stepped out of the car, took a few steps on the asphalt, and was mowed down.
For a moment, let’s set aside emotions and look at the data. If we take August 13, 2007 (the date of the brutal murder of Chiara Poggi in Garlasco) as a reference point and arrive at today, the comparison between the media attention dedicated to a single (albeit atrocious) act of bloodshed and the ongoing massacre of children on our roads is striking:
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Children Killed (0-14 years): While the public followed every single hearing of major media cases, such as Garlasco, over 1,000 children have died in road accidents in Italy during the same period.
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Injured and Disabled: Approximately 200,000 minors have been seriously injured, often with permanent disabilities.
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Leading Cause of Death: For young people aged 15 to 24, the road is the leading cause of death. From 2007 to today, we have lost nearly 9,000 young lives.
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Political Coverage: While criminal cases generate urgent reforms to the penal code and endless parliamentary debates on justice, the road massacre is dismissed as “fate,” accumulating chronic delays on “City 30,” safe infrastructures, and people-friendly mobility.
Every 10 months in Italy, an entire elementary school class disappears due to road violence. Yet, on television, we don’t see reconstructions explaining how speeding or a public space designed for automobiles claim more victims than any serial killer.
Don’t Call It “Fate”
From a sociological perspective, we are witnessing a phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. The heinous crime is perceived as an anomaly to be punished with the utmost rigor; road violence, on the other hand, is downgraded to an “accident.”
The use of language is the first clue to this hypocrisy: very often, we talk about “out-of-control cars” or “cruel destiny,” almost never about political responsibilities in urban planning or an autocentric cultural model that sacrifices the most vulnerable. Local news continues to write—like in this latest case in Bergamo—”child hit by a car,” perpetuating a wrong narrative that absolves the driver and downgrades everything to a “tragic fate” or a “dramatic accident.”
The Mirror We Don’t Want to Look Into
Why don’t we see television marathons analyzing the impact speed of an SUV in an urban center? Why are there no permanent reporters at dangerous intersections where dozens of cyclists and pedestrians die every year?
The bitter truth is that the criminal case, after all, reassures us. It gives us a ‘monster’ to isolate, an absolute anomaly, an executioner light-years away from our everyday life.
Road violence, on the other hand, slaps us in the face with a mirror that no one wants to look into. It forces us to admit a frightening reality: on that asphalt, tomorrow, it could be us. It could be our child, just stepped out of the car, or a loved one crossing the street to go to school.
Seriously addressing the issue of road safety means coming to terms with our own normality, with the chronic haste that makes us press the accelerator, with the addiction to risk: it means accepting that the tragedy doesn’t bear the signature of a serial killer, but unfolds in the ruthless banality of our daily movements.
The Courage to Call It a Massacre: The Example of the Netherlands
This is not about diminishing the tragedy of Garlasco or any other murder victim. It’s about demanding that the same determination, the same deployment of resources, and the same moral urgency be applied to stop the slaughter on the asphalt. And we don’t even need to invent solutions from scratch, because history shows us that changing course is possible.
In the 1970s, the Netherlands faced exactly the same drama: roads dominated by cars, and hundreds of children were mowed down every year. But Dutch society refused to downgrade that massacre to “tragic fate.” Citizens took to the streets en masse, founding a movement with an unequivocal and harsh name: Stop de Kindermoord (literally: “Stop the Murder of Children”).
It was a wave of collective indignation that spared no one and forced politics to overturn the entire urbanistic paradigm: taking space away from cars to give it back to people, redesigning streets with bike lanes and limited traffic zones. It is precisely from that civil anger that the Netherlands began its transformation into the safest and most bike-friendly nation in the world.
If Italy began to treat the death of a child mowed down on the road in Bergamo with the same visceral media obsession reserved for a cold case from prime time, or with the same civil anger of the Dutch streets, perhaps today we would have people-friendly cities, safe streets, protected crossings, and mobility worthy of a civilized country.
*Note: This article constitutes a critical analysis based on official statistical data (ISTAT, ASAPS) and sociological observations on Italian media coverage. The proposed comparison has purely journalistic and civic awareness purposes, without any intention to harm the memory of