Italy has a new Superhero: Fleximan, the speed-cameras enemy

Italy has a new superhero, but he is an ordinary person whose superpower is being able to use common tools, like an angle grinder, to fight against oppressive power. He has been nicknamed “Fleximan” and is an unknown character who has been knocking down speed camera devices by sawing them off at the base with a hose since the middle of last year.

The name “Fleximan” comes from the Italian word “Flessibile,” which means angle grinder, the tool he uses to cut down the poles on which the speed enforcement and fine chambers are located. The latest heist was carried out last Wednesday, around 9:30 p.m., in the municipality of Rosolina (Rovigo), along the Romea State Highway, near the entrance to the urban center.

A camera allegedly caught the anonymous vandal, on whose trail investigators have set themselves. This is the eighth “hit” in a few months in the province of Rovigo alone. Deeds that have raised protests from mayors but also support from motorists and citizens who have been heavily fined for speeding by these devices, often located in hidden places,. On social media, not a few call him a “hero” because he fights against local governments that put speed cameras on major roads with absurdly low speed limits and the sole purpose of collecting money through fines.

This taxation, without any popular approval and under the guise of road safety, is exasperating the common citizens. The mayors of these towns or villages are also victims of a system that cuts financial resources from above through European budget constraints. In the end, they still have to fix the roads, so they make fines to pay for minimum services.

Fleximan commits a crime, as did Robin Hood or the citizens who threw the shipment of tea into the sea in the famous Boston Tea Party. This curious affair is nothing more than yet another struggle of the people against taxation imposed without popular legitimacy through fines. In America, they started a revolution in the name of the principle of “no taxation without representation.” In Italy, for now, they only cut speedcamera poles.