On a Monday in January, my wife and I were driving along in the left-hand lane (linkerbaan) in Germany. In contrast to some Top-40 Dutch lyrics you might once have heard about ‘gas’ and ‘180 linkerbaan’, our Ford Fiesta was chugging along at somewhere between 110 and 120 km/hr. We were in great spirits, travelling home from a holiday in which I had met my little nephew in Switzerland for the very first time.

However lightly life might be skipping along, there are times when you suddenly see brake lights rear up, bright ahead of you. As the cliché says, there's nothing else for it than to hit the brakes and hope for the best. The brake lights of corona came at us faster than we could have imagined, so that even now, after the collision with the virus, we still talk of our life before and during corona. We might look longingly at pictures of crowds of partying people, singing and dancing, taken before and wonder if things will ever be the same again.

On that Monday in January I saw brake lights - this time literally. Two cars in front of me crashed into each other and however hard I stepped on the brake, I could not avoid a collision; nor could the Audi behind me. The experience morphed from the disbelief in the second before the collision that those brake lights couldn't be avoided, to waiting for the emergency services to arrive and eventually the tow truck. We stepped out of the car uninjured, but the impact still resonates.

Whether in a few years' time I'll still be talking about ‘before and after the accident’ I can't yet say. Last Monday I joined others watching online the memorial service of two students of Sustainable Innovation who had lost their lives the week before. The news of the skiing accident in France came as a shock wave; all you can do is step hard on the brake, but the sorrow caused is simply unimaginable. For years I've been a lighthearted visitor to Intermate, but this tragedy is no dent in the association's bumper; it has taken a huge chunk out of its soul.

Sometimes life itself stamps on the brake, rattling us to the core. On a Monday in January I was able to walk away unharmed, but two students on a Monday in February could not - and that's the only thing that really counts. Rest in peace, Axel and Boris.