31, Strasbourg, 28 September 2021

In the light of a September Tuesday, on rue de la Minoterie, the sun brushes the façades of the Port-du-Rhin district. It is 3.10pm. Romain Lambert gets on his bike, his clients’ mail carefully packed in his bag. It is just one run among many for this son of Strasbourg, one like the thousands of others he has made over four years. But it will be his last.

Romain’s bike comes out of a company’s entrance. He does not head for the exit, takes the entrance road the wrong way, and does not stop at the stop sign. Valmir B.’s Mercedes, going too fast, hits him. The impact is brutal, final. Romain dies instantly.

His smile went out that day, but those who knew him still carry its bright imprint. Endearing, a little bit of a tease, generous with a kindness that seemed to flow through him naturally. Romain was one of those people who, without any fuss, made the world better just by being there.

“It was a job he really loved doing and he got on well with his bosses,” says Marine Stieber, his partner, her eyes fixed on the emptiness that has never been filled since³. Romain’s love of the job was not an empty phrase. A former pupil of the Lycée Ort, this Strasbourg native had followed a path as consistent as he was.

After starting out at Deliveroo in 2017, he had chosen to join Tomahawk Bike Messenger, one of the rare companies that employ their couriers as salaried staff. As if, in this world of two-wheeled delivery where everything goes ever faster, Romain had sought to anchor his passion in something more stable, perhaps fairer.

His generosity did not stop at the door of his workplace. He had helped found the charity Les Vélos du cœur [Bikes from the Heart], weaving threads of solidarity across the tarmac of Strasbourg. For Romain, every turn of the pedals was also an act of commitment.

In the courtroom where, almost a year after his death, the driver who hit him was tried, his mother searched for words. How do you put a son’s absence into words? How do you describe the black hole that suddenly sucks all the light out of a life? In her sobs, you could hear the echo of the injustice: until that 28 September, no cyclist had died in Strasbourg that year.

The court ruled: a 15-month suspended prison sentence for Valmir B., held 50% responsible for the accident. Romain had not stopped at the stop sign. The other man was driving too fast. Between those two moments of inattention, death slipped in.

In Port-du-Rhin, at the spot where Romain made his last delivery, nothing marks the tragedy that took place there. The lorries keep going past, indifferent. The cars speed by, in a hurry. Sometimes a cyclist slows down, as if by instinct.