Just to be clear, I was almost killed by a speeding motorist who was racing his mate. The road in question was de restricted but there were a couple of sharp bends which they removed after my accident.
When the French stop tail gating the accident rate will fall because it gives time to avoid, going 10kph less doesn’t change the basic bad style adopted. I try to leave a decent distance but almost every time a french car overtakes me only to fill the space I was leaving and I am usually doing near the max for the stretch of road. The french seem obsessed with forming a train separated by the shortest length possible.
As to drink, why are the accidents where people have been driving not at or just over the limit, they are multiples of the limit higher x2, x3, x4. If you blanket ban alcohol, these people will still drink. still have accidents and still kill and injure. The Law punishes them as it does now. The limits are there, established by experts. Those that flout the law, flout the law, speed, drink, mobile phone, drugs etc.
could not agree more about the speeders and drinkers and phone users. alas for the restriction in speed limit we will have to continue to disagree. not everyone is going to agree on every thing about it. I am just for it. Last news paper i picked up and even glanced at has got to be in my 20’s.
It’s slightly hard for me to assess driving in France because I tend to do long journeys at weekends when the roads are quieter but I agree that alcocol, phones and (to a slightly lesser extent) driving too close would be high on my list of problems the French need to address.
Especially the former - the figures from the document I found were 23.8% of drivers involved in a fatal accident were overthe limit - compared with about 13% in the UK.
the problem is this requires a shift in attitude across the board - the UK has used a fairly consistent and sometimes heavy handed advertising campaign to achieve this.
For me the problem is not the speed limits. The main problems are
Tailgating
The apparent need to overtake at every opportunity on single carriageways. I have had several near-misses with people overtaking on bends and hills. A few years ago there was a terrible accident locally with a woman being killed when she tried to overtake on a notoriously short stretch of road. She had chosen not to wear a seat belt and was a mother of 2 young children and pregnant with her 3rd child. Why do people take such insane risks.
Mobile phone use - I have even seen a bus driver using a mobile phone!
Lack of police patrolling the roads. Macron can introduce a s many new laws as he likes but if there is no-one to police them then they are pointless.
They are introducing new measures regarding alcohol and mobiles too but as has been said above all these things need policing and unless they do a massive recruitment drive and post police on every street corner it’s just not going to make any difference. Tailgating and mobiles are my biggest concernes, but there seems to be a general lack of concentration here which I’ve not particularly found in the UK.
Yes Harry waiting and seeing is all we can do. I just hope that someone in their finite wisdom doesn’t say " It didn’t make much difference so lets reduce it another 10KPH"
What government spokesperson is going to say " we have analysed 1000’s of cases and it is really down to the french being bad drivers!
If they do change other things like more police, tighter drink drive limits it will muddle the results so the “experts” will still claim a success.
When we get autonomous vehicles we all be able to enjoy traveling.
Well I wish it was all the time!
Just been reading an old story about a potential blocking device that would stop use of mobiles completely while driving. I hope something like it happens soon.
Very worrying… and hate to admit it… but in UK I often found myself travelling on “auto-pilot”… doing the same route to work, along the dual carriageway, day after day. Sometimes, I would suddenly ask myself… “where am I…have I missed the turn-off ??”…
and that was without a phone to distract me… just anxiously thinking of the workload/long day ahead.
Today’s drivers need all the concentration they can muster…and should certainly leave the mobiles switched off. I reckon many of them are on “auto-pilot”…
While I agree on phones in cars , is that any different really to smoking, changing stations on the the radio/ cd/ tape or even talking whilst driving. As for zero alcohol whilst driving, I don’ t think that it is even practical to envisage that ,with many foods containing alcohol naturally or added in the cooking .
Sweden was held up as a zero alcohol whilst driving,it isn’t, its 0.2 grammes/litre the limit, whereas the UK is 0.8 and France is 0.5 ( source http://etsc.eu/blood-alcohol-content-bac-drink-driving-limits-across-europe/).
Hi Florian very valid point about smoking… (and all your points, actually)
In his younger days…OH was doing under 30mph on a gentle bend, missed the ashtray, took his eyes off the road just for a millisecond and went up a slope and into the lamp post…instead of continuing gently round the bend… wrote off the car (according to Insurers) .
Thankfully no-one was hurt… and it was a valuable lesson … he gave up smoking shortly after that… (well, it took a while).
Whilst it is a side issue, most cars have the controls on the steering wheel for radios etc. The difference is most passengers do stop talking at junctions etc, callers on mobiles do not know what is occurring on the road so do not shut up.
Especially at stations etc walking up the exits, actually everywhere, and it’s not something important, usually playing candy crushems or something equally banal
Does it really matter? As ever I am sorry to say this will be treated as ‘an interesting suggestion’ by most French drivers of both sexes. There is a mindset here of not being able to stand having a car in front of you, which in over 50 years I haven’t seen change very much, if at all.
A lot of people in France have inherited a faulty gene which does not warn them of any danger when they are driving a car, so there is not much that can be done about it.
Drivers will soon be spending more time looking at their speedometers than the road ahead, particularly when there can sometimes be what appears to be random changes in limits. With the propensity of many drivers here to follow vehicles much too closely I can see an increase in rear end shunts ahead!
