The National Assembly approved on Tuesday the creation of a new qualification of the “truck homicide” in the Criminal Code, “symbolic” for certain deputies, but “which will allow the best cases of death on roads according to its author.
Started by deputy LR Eric Pauget and former Macronista deputy Anne Brugnera, the text had already been adopted in early 2024 in the assembly and the Senate, but the dissolution had disturbed her parliamentary transport, which resumes in the lower chamber.
The text, supported by the Government and adopted by 194 votes to 6, offers new qualifications of “homicides and road injuries” in the Criminal Code, punishing death or injuring a person, with a motorized vehicle.
A “especially symbolic” modification
“We left the binary side ‘involuntary, voluntary,” said Eric Pauget on Tuesday, defending a “better legal semantic rating (and) that will make it possible to judge better.”
“When someone has voluntarily consumed alcohol, drugs, he voluntarily participated in an urban rodeo (…) and behind there is an accident, for victims and for families the legal term in the long term is unacceptable,” he argued in defense of the text, which lists a series of aggravating circumstances.
A “symbolic” modification for the Béatrice Piron attached horizons, emphasizing that the “amount of incurred sanctions” remains unchanged. “But symbols are important,” he said.
“It is a law that aims to reconcile with the judicial institution, sometimes rejected by those who consider that the qualification covers a form of clemency with respect to the perpetrators of fatal accidents,” said Hervé Salignac (PS).
The text soon returned to the Senate
The rebels were divided between counters and abstentions. “The law is not requested by the judges, it is not requested by the lawyers,” said Rodrigo Arenas (LFI), believing that it would be “hypocritical to make the families of the victims believe that this law will fix things.”
Another article stands as a crime that exceeds at least 50 km/h of the authorized speed, with the aim of punishing the crime more directly without delay in a possible recurrence, with sentences of three months in prison and 3,750 euros fine, and additional sentences, such as the cancellation of the permit.
In case of homicide or lesions on the road, a medical exam would be mandatory for the author, at his expense and within 72 hours (unless his condition is incompatible) to determine in particular his ability to drive.
The text will now have to return to the Senate, Eric Pauget, waiting for an adoption without modifications, which would confirm the law.
Source: BFM TV
