The car moved calmly along the A21 motorway, between Piacenza and Turin. At the wheel, a father. Beside him, his wife. In the back, their 31-year-old son, in silence.
They thought he was asleep. In reality, a cardiac arrest had killed him without giving him time to ask for help, and they kept driving for 100 kilometers without suspecting anything. They only stopped at a rest area near Voghera, in the province of Pavia, when they noticed he was not responding to their calls.
A doctor arrived at the scene and confirmed what was already evident: he had no pulse. The parents later reconstructed the exact moment their son stopped responding to them, about 100 kilometers before they stopped the vehicle, without either of them noticing the difference between sleep and death.
