"I braked to avoid hitting a tourist": the pending conversation after an accident

Barcelona"Since the accident, I couldn't stop thinking about how he was, because I didn't know what had happened to him, whether he would live or not." Carlos Roberto Hernández recalls that the car windows shattered into pieces and scattered around him. Before he had time to wonder what had happened, he saw a person fall next to his car, on Carrer Mallorca in Barcelona, right in front of the Sagrada Família. The one who had fallen was Javier, who was on a motorcycle, and he collided with his car, which had braked suddenly. The motorcyclist broke three finger tendons and needed up to four operations after the accident. Even today, he hasn't been able to return to his job as a plumber and doubts if he will ever be able to work again.

Carlos Roberto might never have known how the motorcyclist was once the ambulance took him away if they hadn't met months later in a restorative justice program. It was also there that Javier learned for the first time why the car driver had stopped suddenly: "I braked to avoid hitting a tourist who was taking a selfie in the middle of the street," he explains.

Lawyer Roser Hernández intervened in the mediation between Carlos Roberto and Javier. At the time of the accident, there was no room for them to talk to each other or explain what had happened. The mediation, on the other hand, allowed both of them to ascertain that the car driver was not to blame for anything. Mediations like this are voluntary for both parties and can be carried out in cases where there are no criminal responsibilities, or in parallel to a judicial process.

Although the tourist was the cause of the accident, the parties involved did not manage to get his details because he was just passing through the city, and it was the motorcyclist's insurance that covered the compensation. Now Carlos Roberto admits that it made him feel good to know how the motorcyclist was and to explain to him why he had braked suddenly.

"I wanted him to see that it was a mistake"

Hernández also participated in the mediation between a teenager and a ten-year-old boy, both accompanied by their mothers, for an electric scooter accident in the Hostafrancs neighborhood of Barcelona. “There were two boys racing scooters, and one was going so fast that when he saw my son in front of him, he couldn't avoid him, even though it was a pedestrian area. When they collided, my son grabbed onto the scooter's handlebars, but he fell to the ground,” explains Anny Alvarez, the mother of the younger boy, who was returning home alone from swimming when the scooter hit him. “They left my son there,” she repeats when she recalls the call from the Guàrdia Urbana notifying her of what had happened and that the teenager had left the scene.

Although the child had no serious injuries, the shock lasted a long time, for both the boy and the mother. Months later, they shared a mediation with the teenager and his mother, who apologized to them. "I wanted him to see that it had been a mistake, that he would realize that all actions have consequences," says Anny Álvarez. Following the conversation, the four of them learned that the teenager had emigrated from Puerto Rico just a few weeks prior to meet his mother, who had already arrived in Barcelona years before. A story similar to Anny's. The teenager explained that he had left the scene of the accident for fear of potential consequences regarding his family's immigration papers.

“In a case like this, everyone goes through a difficult time, no one intends to cause harm, even though in insurance matters there's always someone to blame”, assesses lawyer Roser Hernández. The most common scenario would have been for the scooter boy and the child to never have met, let alone their mothers. At most, they would have met in court if there had been one. "When a conflict is litigated, the parties do not normally participate as protagonists in the resolution of the conflict; they are always accompanied by a lawyer. They do not have the freedom to say what they think because it might prejudice the lawyer's strategy,” assesses lawyer Elia Pons, who also participated in the mediation. "We are used to not taking responsibility for solving our own problems. We get a lawyer and that's it,” she adds.

Forgiveness and recognition

Both the mediation between the driver and the motorcyclist who collided in front of the Sagrada Família and the one that brought together the mothers and the two minors involved in an electric scooter accident took place within the framework of a pilot test for a restorative justice program that was launched by the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB) together with the Guardia Urbana, which contacted the affected parties to propose their participation.

Pons highlights the emotional component of these mediations: "I believe that forgiveness and the need for recognition are the most important." Roser Hernández agrees, adding: "A criminal process does not allow for any of this. No matter how much there is a conviction, the emotional part is never covered, nor does it have that function."

The secretary of the ICAB and head of the mediation commission, Carles Garcia Roqueta, has also conducted some of the mediations and, like the other lawyers, agrees that the pilot could be consolidated. He insists on the good results of the pilot program, which received recognition from the Department of Justice of the Generalitat in February.

"If they ask us to participate again, we would be delighted," says Garcia Roqueta. The lawyer adds that there is interest and ongoing conversations to resume these mediations. "It should stop being a pilot plan and be remunerated," he concludes. The mediators who intervened in the test did so free of charge, and Garcia Roqueta assures that the administration only needs to provide the program with a budget.