Yannick Alléno calls on political leaders to “take up the torch of this cause”

In January 2024, the Assembly adopted at first reading the establishment of a crime of “road homicide”. But the dissolution suspended the process, and everything has to be redone, deplores the starred chef Yannick Alléno, whose son Antoine was killed by a hit-and-run driver in May 2022.

On January 29, 2024, the Assembly examined a cross-party bill on the establishment of a crime of “road homicide”. A law defended by starred chef Yannick Alléno, whose son Antoine was killed by a drunk driver without a license in May 2022. “It is the creation of a new law, it is not nothing, it is not semantics, assured the grieving father. The refusal to comply or the telephone were included as aggravating circumstances that did not exist. The other day, I was coming back from the airport, I was watching people in cars, they are telephoning, they are texting, they are swerving, they are putting other people’s lives in danger.”

The law was voted unanimously in the first reading on January 31, but six months later with the dissolution of the Assembly everything has to be redone, laments Yannick Alleno: “Today I call on all political leaders to take up the torch of this cause, because today this law is necessary.”

The text aimed to no longer speak of “involuntary manslaughter” but of “road homicide”, when one or more aggravating circumstances exist. The new aggravating circumstances added to the law include driving with headphones or a mobile phone in hand, the consumption of psychoactive substances, alcohol, drugs and refusals to comply. For Yannick Alléno, this law must change the behavior of motorists.

“This law is necessary to communicate to all car users that it is now over. What will happen tomorrow will force you to face your responsibilities. So there is an urgent need to pass this law.”

Yannick Alléno, father of a victim of a drunk driver

to franceinfo

If the unchanged penalties in the text lead lawyers specializing in road traffic law or elected officials to say that the law is a “empty shell”Yannick Alléno defends its educational scope, but above all its usefulness for bereaved families. He recalls that the collateral victims suffer, behind these disappearances, “a very significant social disaster” : “We need a new recognition of co-victims to help them, so that they can get through it, so that a mother can continue to have the strength to help the children who remain“.

The Antoine Alléno association is honoring relatives of victims in an exhibition to be seen in September on the Pont de l’Alma in Paris, in partnership with the photographer JR.