ENRICO
DYING ON THE STREETS
Dear editor,
I am writing you about a very delicate subject: people who die and get injured on the streets. Every person who dies needs respect, but the number of those who die on the streets is so great that I got stunned. Mass media talk about this but they treat it as a normal , secondary phenomenon, as if there was something more important to talk about. That's no news. If someone threw a little atomic bomb on Italy every year, which caused the same number of victims as those who die on the streets, this would be a headline-hitting news for months. If a company did the same thing to get profit, people would demonstrate and scream "WAR! WAR!". Let us figure out a big headline like this:"LITTLE NUCLEAR BOMB IN PARMA. 300 PEOPLE DIED", small subtitle "ALSO THIS YEAR "…….." CAR INDUSTRY THREW H BOMB TO REACH ITS GOALS." A child suffocated by a candy is more interesting than fifty people killed on a school bus. Due to TV messages, which make people lose the sense of reality, mum is worried every time her little child eats candies, while she calmly tells him: "Go by car with your daddy". The car, ten times more dangerous, as we look at the horrifying number of dead and injured people, is little "advertised". The government makes a law, which prescribes to give each highway overpass its number; newspapers talk about pedophiles, about mothers killing their children, about kids killing their parents, about everything strange and which attracts attention. Even if these phenomena are very rare, newspapers do not mind; these news have a large audience. Mass media are creating a virtual world of dangers that do not exist and we are getting out of touch with reality; media world is becoming more real than our everyday experience. Today people are involved in car accidents at a traffic light because they are thinking of Saddam Hussein, Cogne trial and the stones thrown from the overpasses. But if we look at our everyday life, I do not know anyone who knows a pedophile, a killer mother, an Al-Qaeda terrorist. Instead I know a lot of people who were involved in car accidents, some of them were injured and some died. By highlighting dangers which do not exist, that is which are not very likely to happen, we lose money, a lot of money that could save hundreds of lives, which were destroyed in a non spectacular way. It is more likely to be struck by a lightning than to be the victim of one of the disasters proposed by the front page of newspapers. TV let us know troubles we do not have and it makes us blind to troubles we have. We are scared by asteroids which could hit the earth and we quietly cross the street where we could really be injured by a racing car, which is not certainly coming from an other planet. We are submitted to images of smiling guys and charming top-models, driving car which can go faster and faster, equipped with air bag also in the boot, maybe for the dog. These equipments are not able to save the thirty lives who die every weekend. Even compact cars are able to overcome speed limits. Many people are likely to bring their car every week to a motor-racing track, where they can overcome the speed limit of 130 km/h. If someone let a kalashnikov in the hand of his son, I do not know whether the judge would accept an excuse like "I didn't think the boy would pull the trigger". It would be as if a motor industry said: "I didn't think the driver would really go at 250 km/h". Mass media favorite culprits are drunk people, drunken truck drivers, young boys with no good sense. Is it reasonable to think that peoples will not get drunk any more, that a guy will not be a guy any more? If a drunk man has in his hand a stick or a little bit of nitroglycerin or he can activate the start switches of a USA rocketry plant, the damages will be of a very different degree. I hope that American Intelligence has been thinking that also who is in charge of a nuclear control room, could once in his life drink too much, maybe due to a very strange event. Who produces diabolically destructive objects is not to be held accountable? And is not to be held accountable also who let them to be produced? It is better to take it out on the last wheel of the carriage, on the weak link in a chain, on the young man who did a boyish prank. Our government is very worried about our health: we must wear crash helmet, safety belts, it gave us speed limits. But I am sure that it is not possible to put on the streets cars which can go at a maximum speed higher than 200 km/h! than 300 km/h!! than 400 km/h!!! Is there a limit, isn't it ? Does this mean that in the next years we will see on the ring road of our town a rocket, with eighty air/bags, that can go over 500 km/h with a 2 million horse-power engine? Absolutely not! There is the speed limit; if someone is out of his mind, he will mind his own business. And the others? Those without eighty air/bags? Parents who drive big cars, which go over 200 km/h, complain about their sons going to fast with compact cars, or slightly bigger cars, which maybe can not overcome 200 km/h speed. I wish to remind that speed limit on highways in Italy is of 130 km/h; someone does not know it, someone thinks it is a suggestion, someone does not even care. The word "limit" probably is not the right word because it does not limit the speed even of the smallest car model. When a factory produces glasses, some pieces happen to be defective. To avoid the waste (defective pieces cannot be sold) it is normal to use A, B, C analysis. To put it simply, the defects are checked and counted; it comes out, as an example, that the 60% of defective pieces have a broken handle (A class), that the 30% have the bottom detached (B class), that the 5% is deformed (C class). Then there are a lot of other defects, but with irrelevant percentages. At the end the conclusion is that, to spend few money and have big results, it is enough to discover the cause of "broken handles" (A class); secondly we could be interested to know the causes of the "detached bottoms" (B class). By discovering only the cause of "broken handles" defects miraculously decrease of 60%. This short story is useful to notice that, when newspapers talk about car accidents causes, they tell you: "...the problems are high speed (A class), drivers imprudence (B class), infringement of the most basic principles of highway code (C class)...". There are, then, the fog, drunken drivers, slippery roads, boys without driving license and a lot of other causes. The question is: if car companies produced cars, which are not able to overcome speed limit, how much would the number of people, injured or killed by car accidents, decrease? " With the little time we have (people think) how can we go from Milan to Rome at a maximum speed of only 130 Km/h?" Indeed, Minister of transport proposed to increase speed limit. We are, may be, too culturally backward to take care of those who die in a so barbarian way: fast car is a symbol of virility, a way of seduction, a weapon. My speech is, maybe, a moralistic one, it attracts people's attention less than an enchanting asteroid that could hit the earth. Even those who are governing and are able to get data, do not pay so much attention to this subject. Local authorities, to take an example from our every day life, by reading the data they possess, maybe found out, that the main cause of disastrous car accidents are motorcars parked in a no-parking area. They order local policemen to punish infringements of no-parking areas; they give "superfines", so that people, who park in an "A AREA" think their infringement is more serious than not to stop the car at a STOP sign, or to cross with red light. Local authorities fill municipality's coffers by fighting this "evil" in our society . I am making an appeal: look around, switch off TV a week in a month, and you will understand that Saddam Hussein is in Iraq, that we do not know any killer mother, and that, looking at the stars, we do not see any killer asteroid and that, maybe, it is better to pay attention every time we cross the street.
Dear editor,
I am writing you about a very delicate subject: people who die and get injured on the streets. Every person who dies needs respect, but the number of those who die on the streets is so great that I got stunned. Mass media talk about this but they treat it as a normal , secondary phenomenon, as if there was something more important to talk about. That's no news. If someone threw a little atomic bomb on Italy every year, which caused the same number of victims as those who die on the streets, this would be a headline-hitting news for months. If a company did the same thing to get profit, people would demonstrate and scream "WAR! WAR!". Let us figure out a big headline like this:"LITTLE NUCLEAR BOMB IN PARMA. 300 PEOPLE DIED", small subtitle "ALSO THIS YEAR "…….." CAR INDUSTRY THREW H BOMB TO REACH ITS GOALS." A child suffocated by a candy is more interesting than fifty people killed on a school bus. Due to TV messages, which make people lose the sense of reality, mum is worried every time her little child eats candies, while she calmly tells him: "Go by car with your daddy". The car, ten times more dangerous, as we look at the horrifying number of dead and injured people, is little "advertised". The government makes a law, which prescribes to give each highway overpass its number; newspapers talk about pedophiles, about mothers killing their children, about kids killing their parents, about everything strange and which attracts attention. Even if these phenomena are very rare, newspapers do not mind; these news have a large audience. Mass media are creating a virtual world of dangers that do not exist and we are getting out of touch with reality; media world is becoming more real than our everyday experience. Today people are involved in car accidents at a traffic light because they are thinking of Saddam Hussein, Cogne trial and the stones thrown from the overpasses. But if we look at our everyday life, I do not know anyone who knows a pedophile, a killer mother, an Al-Qaeda terrorist. Instead I know a lot of people who were involved in car accidents, some of them were injured and some died. By highlighting dangers which do not exist, that is which are not very likely to happen, we lose money, a lot of money that could save hundreds of lives, which were destroyed in a non spectacular way. It is more likely to be struck by a lightning than to be the victim of one of the disasters proposed by the front page of newspapers. TV let us know troubles we do not have and it makes us blind to troubles we have. We are scared by asteroids which could hit the earth and we quietly cross the street where we could really be injured by a racing car, which is not certainly coming from an other planet. We are submitted to images of smiling guys and charming top-models, driving car which can go faster and faster, equipped with air bag also in the boot, maybe for the dog. These equipments are not able to save the thirty lives who die every weekend. Even compact cars are able to overcome speed limits. Many people are likely to bring their car every week to a motor-racing track, where they can overcome the speed limit of 130 km/h. If someone let a kalashnikov in the hand of his son, I do not know whether the judge would accept an excuse like "I didn't think the boy would pull the trigger". It would be as if a motor industry said: "I didn't think the driver would really go at 250 km/h". Mass media favorite culprits are drunk people, drunken truck drivers, young boys with no good sense. Is it reasonable to think that peoples will not get drunk any more, that a guy will not be a guy any more? If a drunk man has in his hand a stick or a little bit of nitroglycerin or he can activate the start switches of a USA rocketry plant, the damages will be of a very different degree. I hope that American Intelligence has been thinking that also who is in charge of a nuclear control room, could once in his life drink too much, maybe due to a very strange event. Who produces diabolically destructive objects is not to be held accountable? And is not to be held accountable also who let them to be produced? It is better to take it out on the last wheel of the carriage, on the weak link in a chain, on the young man who did a boyish prank. Our government is very worried about our health: we must wear crash helmet, safety belts, it gave us speed limits. But I am sure that it is not possible to put on the streets cars which can go at a maximum speed higher than 200 km/h! than 300 km/h!! than 400 km/h!!! Is there a limit, isn't it ? Does this mean that in the next years we will see on the ring road of our town a rocket, with eighty air/bags, that can go over 500 km/h with a 2 million horse-power engine? Absolutely not! There is the speed limit; if someone is out of his mind, he will mind his own business. And the others? Those without eighty air/bags? Parents who drive big cars, which go over 200 km/h, complain about their sons going to fast with compact cars, or slightly bigger cars, which maybe can not overcome 200 km/h speed. I wish to remind that speed limit on highways in Italy is of 130 km/h; someone does not know it, someone thinks it is a suggestion, someone does not even care. The word "limit" probably is not the right word because it does not limit the speed even of the smallest car model. When a factory produces glasses, some pieces happen to be defective. To avoid the waste (defective pieces cannot be sold) it is normal to use A, B, C analysis. To put it simply, the defects are checked and counted; it comes out, as an example, that the 60% of defective pieces have a broken handle (A class), that the 30% have the bottom detached (B class), that the 5% is deformed (C class). Then there are a lot of other defects, but with irrelevant percentages. At the end the conclusion is that, to spend few money and have big results, it is enough to discover the cause of "broken handles" (A class); secondly we could be interested to know the causes of the "detached bottoms" (B class). By discovering only the cause of "broken handles" defects miraculously decrease of 60%. This short story is useful to notice that, when newspapers talk about car accidents causes, they tell you: "...the problems are high speed (A class), drivers imprudence (B class), infringement of the most basic principles of highway code (C class)...". There are, then, the fog, drunken drivers, slippery roads, boys without driving license and a lot of other causes. The question is: if car companies produced cars, which are not able to overcome speed limit, how much would the number of people, injured or killed by car accidents, decrease? " With the little time we have (people think) how can we go from Milan to Rome at a maximum speed of only 130 Km/h?" Indeed, Minister of transport proposed to increase speed limit. We are, may be, too culturally backward to take care of those who die in a so barbarian way: fast car is a symbol of virility, a way of seduction, a weapon. My speech is, maybe, a moralistic one, it attracts people's attention less than an enchanting asteroid that could hit the earth. Even those who are governing and are able to get data, do not pay so much attention to this subject. Local authorities, to take an example from our every day life, by reading the data they possess, maybe found out, that the main cause of disastrous car accidents are motorcars parked in a no-parking area. They order local policemen to punish infringements of no-parking areas; they give "superfines", so that people, who park in an "A AREA" think their infringement is more serious than not to stop the car at a STOP sign, or to cross with red light. Local authorities fill municipality's coffers by fighting this "evil" in our society . I am making an appeal: look around, switch off TV a week in a month, and you will understand that Saddam Hussein is in Iraq, that we do not know any killer mother, and that, looking at the stars, we do not see any killer asteroid and that, maybe, it is better to pay attention every time we cross the street.