Well, I suppose it depends where in France you are, but I’d say you ain’t seen nothing yet
Interesting times driving back to Oxfordshire today. The nuttiest drivers seemed to be the Dutch, with one NL plate car pulling in infront of me 1 cars length away at 130kph on the autoroute. Lots of people coming past doing at least 30mph/50kph more than me, some quite a bit more than that. Many also who seem to want to ‘race’ with a car that’s starting to pass them.
Made it home in 1 piece, in about 11 hours travelling time including stops and the tunnel, which was good.
IMO it’s the Belgians, but statistically if nuttiest equates with most accidents, in realation to the size of the population and level of car ownership, it’s the French.
OTOH, S Africa can easily beat that - much bigger country, fewer cars yet eight or nine times as many road death pa. The Christmas road death toll alone usually exceeds that of the UK for the entire year!
I’ve not especially noticed the Dutch driving badly previously - TBH they tend to be slow and careful - but today was an exception.
There’s a new trend I’ve noticed too, with some EV drivers who have discovered their cars can accelerate like a sports car, and have begun zapping around, overtaking several cars in a short length of clear road, or suddenly zipping out after driving steadily on the autoroute (and also on UK motorways).
Life was always cheap in Africa - I can imagine SA roads well enough.
Glad you weren’t killed, or otherwise inconvenienced by the Dutch.
Unlike SA’s drivers, the main roads are actually very good (as in many other formerly repressive regimes. I think Mussolini initiated the autostrade in the mid-Twenties, and in the Thirties,the Nazis copied it. Good roads facilitate rapid movement of forces and ominously a sizeable proportion of German and other EU countries increased defence budget is for improving roads and strengthening bridges to that end.
Some serious thread drift there!
Motorways also make good dispersal points for RAF jets in times of war when their normal bases have been targeted by the enemy.
Driving through Zimbabwe, there is (was?) a fantastic piece of highway from Harare to Mugabe’s house. Bet the tanks only drove ‘away’ from it.
That’s because they’ve normally got a caravan attached to the back.
I’m coming to the conclusion that some foreign plated cars in the UK are driven by ex-pats on a visit who think that camera recorded transgressions are no longer followed up.
Are they?
I can’t read the whole article as it’s behind a paywall, but it seems that the recent UK-EU “reset” may mean that fines for traffic offences on both sides of La Manche will soon be followed up again:
As they say, it’s a good wind that doesn’t blow any ill.
Our chemin is only wide enough for one car. A young driver who lived a bit further up that road kept passing us at high speed especially when walking the dogs. One day, I stepped out in front of her and made her stop and asked her if she would drive at a more considerate speed when there are pedestrians and animals about.
“… but the speed limit is 80 kph” she protested.
“Yes, but it’s not compulsory” I growled and watched her speed off in a huff.
She now slows down when she passes and we even get a friendly wave.
I’m glad that you had a positive outcome from your exchange of views.
EU only and not likely to be active until late 2027. UK may be negociating inclusion but it is not part of the current changes to the EU legislation. Comparatively speaking there is not a lot of EU drivers committing offences in the UK and truck drivers are already liable to on the spot penalty payments and the UK police were not using the Cross Border Agreement prior to brexit. The report does include “Member States will report on issues concerning offences committed by third country drivers.”
It’s added new offences to the original list of eight below
• Speeding;
• Not using a seatbelt;
• Not stopping at a red traffic light or other mandatory stop signal;
• Drink driving;
• Driving under the influence of drugs;
• Not wearing a safety helmet (for motorcyclists);
• Using a forbidden lane (such as the forbidden use of an emergency lane, a lane reserved
for public transport, or a lane closed down for road works);
• Illegally using a mobile phone, or any other communications device, while driving
A lot of the bad driving I saw on the autobahn network in NW Germany was from Dutch drivers. They often drove much faster than the traffic conditions allowed. The German traffic had more respect for other road users. I also disliked the long tail of other Dutch cars heading south through France that seemed terrified of losing sight of the group member immediately ahead of them. Their determination to keep in contact meant witnessing some very dangerous overtaking.
I’ve found that phenomenon in France for over forty years, in all sorts of situations, Sometimes it takes a “frank exchange of views” to establish mutual respect,
Subsequently, the person becomes very friendly.