When life can change in a single moment and forever

All it takes is a moment, a damn moment, and life changes, forever. That's what happened to a father, Luca Valdiserri, a journalist for Corriere della Sera, who recounted with great force the tragedy that overwhelmed his family three years ago. He did so yesterday at a meeting organised by Autostrade per l'Italia on road safety as part of the Fuori Festival.

Luca had a son, Francesco, a beautiful boy of only 19, studying film at the Sapienza University and playing in a band. His life was cut short one evening like so many others by a girl who mowed him down while he was walking peacefully at eight o'clock in the evening on the pavement of the Cristoforo Colombo in Rome together with his friend Nico, he was spared.

The road is three lanes and very busy, where it is dangerous even to cross. But when drivers are under the influence of alcohol, cannabis or any other similar substance, even walking on a pavement can become fatal. The girl who killed Francesco was sentenced to five years, first under house arrest, but was later committed to a rehabilitation centre because, despite what happened, it seems she had not stopped using substances. One cannot and must not die like this.

"Since that day, life has changed. So many things have become burdensome, even going to dinner with friends who have children your age and with whom until then you shared stories, now increasingly difficult to hear. But it is in everyday life that the normality of existence is lost, when you have to set the table for three and no longer for four (Luca has another daughter, Daria, ed) or when your son's favourite team (Totthenam in Francesco's case, ed) scores a goal and you can no longer share that joy with him. Ours is no longer life, but survival tied to the memory in an attempt to do something good. When a tragedy like this happens you have to decide whether to do something, or to close yourself up in your pain, which in any case does not change. It was Francesco's friends who led us to open up'.

Luca decided to share this painful experience not to 'make Francis a saint' but to prevent these tragedies from happening again. He did this in schools but the attention of children at that age is low. "We therefore thought of a different way of approaching the subject," he explained, "because road safety education on its own does not work very well, it must be combined with something creative linked to music or cinema, for example. We started with a cineforum to which we added an under-25 short film competition: more than 400 came and more than a thousand young people took part. I think that having a passion helps you to do things better, even to drive'.