Bus driver beaten up in July 2022, driver attacked in Dugny in August 2020… Against these reprehensible acts of which its agents are regularly victims, the RATP is toughening its tone. This Friday, the autonomous Paris transport authority announced the launch of an “anti-aggression” information campaign. Objective: denounce the attacks suffered by company workers, and remind people that their perpetrators risk “criminal sanctions”.
In 2022, an expert report carried out for the CSE of the authority’s surface network had already reported a worrying situation, with an explosion in the number of bus drivers attacked. Last year, the agency recorded “more than 1,200 attacks” on its employees across its network, or more than three every day. These acts, which could range from spitting and insults to physical attacks, mainly targeted agents in direct contact with the population, such as machinists, controllers or GPSR agents responsible for security. An unjustifiable assessment, insists the public transport company: “Being in a hurry, in a bad mood, tired or even having suffered disruptions on your journey, nothing ever justifies violence, particularly towards the agents who provide daily services and regardless of the circumstances, a public service mission to travelers,” she notes in a press release.
Since Friday, 5,000 stickers and 11,200 posters will therefore be deployed “in order to challenge users” about these acts of violence and to provoke “real collective awareness”. In addition, the authority praises the establishment of a “complete anti-aggression system”, by training its agents to defuse tense situations, by equipping them with discreet alarms to sound the alert in the event of aggression, in by increasing the number of cameras in the network or by encouraging employees who are attacked to systematically file complaints. Perpetrators of verbal or physical attacks, for their part, risk fines of up to 150,000 euros and ten years in prison. Enough to calm the ardor of the most virulent travelers.
