Harvard Kennedy School student on mission to improve road safety after brothers killed in crash

Giovanni Pintor is a man on a mission. His life's work and focus are making roads, and specifically road design, safer. "It's a worldwide problem," he explained as walks through JFK Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Over a million people die every year in road crashes and more than 50 million are left injured." He describes it as an issue so painful that, as human beings, we avoid it. 

For Giovanni, it is inescapable. He was in a car with his brothers Matteo and Francesco when they crashed on Christmas Day in 2017.  They were driving to their grandmother's house in Sardinia. The car skidded on an infamous curve and hit a defective guardrail that impaled the car. Neither speed nor alcohol was a factor. Matteo and Francesco were killed. More than eight years later, Giovanni says he thinks of them every minute of every day.  Their memory guides his efforts to spare other families the pain of a preventable loss. "I think they would appreciate that I am grinding," he said. "And that I'm trying to change—and make some impact—first in the place where I come from and then globally."

Shortly after the crash, Giovanni and his friends launched an effort to shape policy.  He says that everyone, including policy makers, knew the road where his brothers died was dangerous. "Everybody knew and nobody did anything. So, we just decided it was the time to do it after this huge tragedy," he said.

They spearheaded Adesso Basta ("that's enough"), a campaign to raise awareness and demand safer roads. Their unconventional lobbying efforts galvanized young people. "We started really advocating and lobbying in an interesting way through music, basketball, art," Giovanni explains. Big-name artists and DJs performed concerts. Adesso Basta basketball tournaments drew attention and crowds. Seven years later, their call to action paid off. The government spent millions of euros to build a new, safer road to replace the dangerous curve where Giovanni's brothers died.

Navigation app NEPO

His work as an activist led to a position at the UN Road Safety Fund and into a creative realm as the designer of a navigation app that optimizes for safety. While most navigation apps optimize for speed and efficiency, Giovanni's app NEPO ("nephew" in Italian) directs users to a route that steers them clear of trouble spots. Drivers and pedestrians can input information (including photos and video) about more than two dozen hazards. The hazards appear as geo-location symbols on the screen with a brief description.  Users can also mark the scene of a deadly accident as a kind of digital memorial, with a flower graphic. Giovanni is confident that people who try it will appreciate knowing how to avoid dangerous areas. "I'm quite confident because I know that when you touch it you realize the value of it," he said.  

The day Giovanni showed us the app; he was also preparing for final exams. At the end of May, he will graduate from the Harvard Kennedy School with a master's degree in public administration.  One of his final projects in the program is especially meaningful.

Fitchburg road project

Through a conversation that began at Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll's "Get Stuff Done" summit, Fitchburg Mayor Samantha Squailia "pitched" her city's road project to Professor Linda Bilmes' Harvard class. With a Pavement Condition Index (a kind of "road rating") of 51, Squailia faces an all-too-familiar challenge in gateway cities: bad roads and a budget that covers only a fraction of the need.  Squailia, whose background as a civil engineer gives her a unique perspective on the issue, is eager for new, innovative solutions, particularly municipal financing strategies and road preservation.

Her pitch resonated with Giovanni who immediately expressed his interest in the project to Professor Bilmes. He shared his personal story with the professor who then shared hers. "I lost my brother," she explains.  "He died as a result of an injury sustained in a road accident," Bilmes said. "And so, when Gio said this to me, I actually said, 'I understand.' And Gio hugged me. He said, 'I've been looking for a sign… This is a sign." 

It was clearly a match and not just because of the emotional draw.  "We also had a really good project," Bilmes said. "A very hardworking and engaged major who's very passionate about the subject and who is, herself, an engineer. And so, the challenge for me was to sort of build up a team around Gio that was going to be right for this project."

Professor Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Public Finance, says that Giovanni was willing to work on the project day and night. "In this specific case, probably there will be people whose lives are saved because of Gio's championing of this issue in this situation right here in Fitchburg," Bilmes said. 

The students made safety a guiding principle in their work as they came up with ideas for improving roads and stretching road funding. Professor Bilmes says, in Fitchburg and beyond, Giovanni is working to make road safety a priority from the start, not an afterthought. In the same way that ADA compliance is part of new building design, from an architect's first drawings, she says road safety strategy can, and should, be integrated into the initial plans. "He's looking to change the mindset around road repair so that road safety is part of that integrated approach," Bilmes said.  

Driven to make a difference, Giovanni is planning for the next chapter in his professional life. This summer, he will begin working at CYVL, an infrastructure intelligence platform that is mapping roads in Greater Boston.  He also hopes, as more users rely on NEPO, that people in the area who want safer roads will demand more from decision-makers to affect change. "If we can create a layer of citizen-driven information, hopefully we can leverage that to speak to public administrations to fix those spots first," Giovanni said.