45, Deliveroo courier, Lyon, April 2023

The night of 4 to 5 April 2023 looked like so many others for Chafik Daouadi, a Deliveroo courier. The banks of the Rhône, more precisely quai Jean-Moulin at the level of rue Gentil, in Lyon’s 2nd arrondissement, were his workplace. At that late hour, around 12.10am, the emptier streets make for faster journeys and more runs. In the dark, his bike glided over the asphalt, his figure barely visible between the street lamps.

Born in 1977, Chafik was 45. Although his sole-trader business was officially registered at an address in Lyon’s 6th arrondissement, he was in fact living at the Cité de Lyon, a hostel run by the Salvation Army, silent testimony to the precarity that marked his life. He had become an auto-entrepreneur, France’s simplified self-employed status, in delivery in June 2020 according to his entry in the trade and companies register, and had made the job his daily livelihood, like so many other “tarmac fanatics”, in the words of Toufik, another Deliveroo courier, still in shock but not surprised by the tragedy. His presence on the roads of Lyon that night was not a matter of chance, but of necessity.

It was on these same banks of the Rhône that he met his fate. A sudden, brutal impact. A collision with a Mercedes AMG driven by a 32-year-old from Villeurbanne, next to Lyon, heading south. The motorist, who said he went through on a green light, did not see the cyclist coming from his left and hit him violently. Chafik was in cardiac and respiratory arrest when the emergency services arrived. Despite 40 minutes of cardiac massage, he could not be revived and was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.

Carrying no identity papers, he was only formally identified the next day. The motorist first stopped after the collision, then left before the police arrived, parking his car nearby and leaving on foot. He finally turned himself in to the authorities two hours later and was taken into police custody, before being brought before a judge with a view to opening a judicial investigation. What happened next could not be established.