Autostrade per l’Italia’s vast programme: “abolishing fate” by 2050

I am in a wonderful country: like many Italians I will spend most of this bridge on the motorway and the promotional signs for tourists tell me so. However – more than the mysterious exotic names of petrol station sandwiches, more than the fact that stopping to eat a sandwich in a crowded petrol station during a long weekend is the best possible advert against universal suffrage – the slogan that stands out on one strikes me screen: by 2050, Autostrade per l’Italia has set itself the objective of “zero fatalities”. A singular objective if we consider that, dictionary in hand, “fatality” is a term that has to do with fate, destiny or chance or whatever we want to call it; with the imponderables escaping our control no matter how hard we plan.

I deduce that Mallarmé is right in saying that a roll of the dice will never abolish chance; apparently, the case (the one that, when I leave after the sandwich, makes me fear that the car will get out of my control and patatrac) will be abolished by Autostrade per l’Italia. Not immediately, of course, but by 2050. We truly are in a wonderful country.