31, Clamart, September 2020
On a mild September evening, as the town of Clamart is about to slip into night, Dan Botu, 31, is making one of his last deliveries of the day. His moped speeds along avenue Charles-de-Gaulle, a two-lane road running through this town in the Hauts-de-Seine, just south-west of Paris. As every evening, he is working the streets of the town, insulated bag on his back.
On this Wednesday, 9 September 2020, at around 8pm, the courier tries to make a U-turn level with number 358 on the avenue, near the post office. A routine manoeuvre in the daily life of workers who are often forced to rush. But this time, he loses his balance and falls from his two-wheeler onto the D306 road.
In the split second that followed, a motorcyclist coming the other way could not avoid the body lying on the road. The impact, extremely violent, was fatal. With head injuries, Dan could not be resuscitated despite the swift arrival of the emergency services. He officially died on 11 September 2020, two days after the accident.
The town’s CCTV cameras captured those tragic moments, silent witnesses to one death among many. Investigators were able to establish that neither alcohol nor drugs played any part in the accident. Just the fatality of a fall, the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The motorcyclist, also a victim of this road tragedy, was taken to hospital with several fractures, carrying in his body the scars of this unforeseeable encounter.
Behind the anonymity of this “Uber Eats courier” was Dan Botu, a man born on 10 October 1988, whose life came to a brutal end at the age of 31. One face among the thousands of workers who travel through our cities every day, braving the weather, the traffic and fatigue to provide a service that has become essential in today’s society.
His story was covered in just two press articles, barely a few lines in Ouest-France and Actu Hauts-de-Seine. Media coverage as brief as his last run, a reflection of the anonymity in which these workers do their job, even when it costs them their lives.
Dan Botu now rests in the Parc cemetery in Clamart. A grave that gives back a name, an identity, to a man the media had described only as a “cycle courier”, a “worker”, almost erasing his humanity behind his job.