The “shock” course, a face-to-face between drivers and victims to prevent recurrence

By a fresh morning in November, on the way to work, Gaël sails, with a light heart, in unison with the radio of his car. The shaving sun dazzles it for a moment. “And” POUM “. I hit a man on the pedestrian crossing, ”he says. He hadn’t seen it. The pedestrian is ejected. Fortunately, this chef was driving slowly. The injured man was arrested twenty-eight days.

It was in 2023. Since then, Gaël has been held, struck down by guilt and assailed in Cauchemars. “I was like a couillon. I could have killed him. All this time when I told my child to pay attention to the pedestrian crossing, and I am the one who “ate” a person. Now it brakes mechanically in front of each pedestrian passage. Even when the fire is green.

Gaël was sentenced to four months of license suspension. Justice authorized him to transform them into seventy hours of work of general interest. He carried out part of it at the end of January, during an educational week organized by the penitentiary integration and probation service (SPIP) in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). That morning, in the fire station of Foix (Ariège), gendarmes sensitize a dozen participants in the risks of alcohol and cannabis. They make them put on glasses that blur their vision to simulate the effects of drugs; tell how they sometimes have to tell parents that their child has just died on the road. In a clip, brigadiers, marked for life by these collaborators, testify: “They do not cry, they yell. It comes from the bowels, ”says one of them, moved.

These days, alternative to fines and prison, have been developing for ten years in France. Justice considers that they better prevent recurrence, and therefore save lives. Not a week goes by without accidents to mourn families. On January 30, 2025, a high school student died in a school bus accident in Châteaudun (Eure-et-Loir). The driver was positive with cannabis. In the process, nearly 9,000 school transport drivers were subjected to alcohol and narcotics. 49 were positive.

The car, a weapon

The training continues at the Verdaich rehabilitation clinic, in Gaillac-Toulza, south of the pink city. Laurent was torn off a leg in May. On his motorcycle, he struck a car recklessly stopped in a turn. He shows his prosthesis to his audience, details his rehabilitation, serious infections, the Homeric fight with insurance – “it’s harder than having lost my leg, I assure you”. He talks about it with a striking composure. Probably because he is a soldier. These educational meetings seem beneficial to him.

“An accident can happen to everyone. But if you are increasing the risk factors, going too fast, consuming alcohol or narcotics, you will have to live the rest of your life with what you have done to others. A car is a weapon, “warns Arnaud Delory, director of care for the clinic, of the cold and dry tone of those who have seen a lot. He recalls that a serious road accident will have to pay hundreds of thousands of euros in compensation to an injured person: “You will have to work all your life for this. »»

An essential internship

Attentive, participants are often stirred. “It makes you think. The poor biker … “, cogitates one of them, condemned for a positive alcohol control by returning from an” evening between friends “. “It’s a good lesson,” said Mohamed. He was tried for a road trip. “I looked at my messages on my phone three or four seconds. I found myself in a post. This mechanic is however made aware of the damage that the road can make. He lost his father in a car accident when he was 5 years old. “I made bullshit in my life that I would probably not have committed with a father,” he analyzes.

Only two convicted people seem elsewhere. A young person remains riveted on his phone. It is called, he won: “Wallah, I’m in training there. Another is shaken with nervous braids. He grumbles that there is nothing wrong with consuming hard drugs. It will slip away from lunch time.

These road offenders are the same to Monsieur and Madame Tout-le-Monde. We could also have been driving. Gaël, the man who spilled a pedestrian, had never committed an offense in thirty years of license. Even a supervisor, advisor to the SPIP, admits before the group that had already been withdrawn three permit points for using the laptop while driving. “Everyone should do this internship,” says Gaël. A second of inattention is enough for your life to stop. Or that of others.