As someone who is going to be a passenger in France next month (while hubby is the driver)...and seeing the posts about speeding tickets, here's a link to an article in French entree magazine about new look radar warning signs, a wrong way sign and a reminder about speed limits...
After an almost 4% rise in road deaths last year, you can understand enforcement of speed limits (and the trial lowering of limits in some areas).
FYI, July 2015 road deaths in France were up 20% over the previous year. Authorities are pretty upset.
That's brutal! The article says people are opposed to lowering speeds (of course they are - they would be here as well) but in the interests of public safety...
I'm curious as to whether they have tied the increase in traffic deaths directly to excess speeding. Most recent studies in the US show that more traffic deaths are due to distracted driving and driving under the influence than by exceeding the speed limits.
Hi Nicole P!
Thank you for this information - it is helpful! I will be a passenger soon also; my hubby and son will be driving us through France. I send this info and link to them. Feeling a little anxious about the driving part but reading all the helpful hints here makes me less so. Have a wonderful trip!
Jaye - we were apprehensive when we rented a car in France in 2012 (it was only for a few days on the North coast). But my reasoning was thousands upon thousands of people rent every year with no issues, and hubby is probably a better driver than at least 50% of them ;)
We rented with Europcar (via AutoEurope) and lucked out that there was a GPS integrated into the car. But of course the person before us was German and the GPS was speaking German (and we don't have a lot of experience with GPS). By the time we got it speaking English, we had somehow programmed it to go to the last spot it had been - which was somewhere in the middle of Paris. After all my careful planning about easiest pick up spot to get out of the city. Sigh. Luckily, it was a Sun morning, so traffic was light...and somehow we never got a ticket in the mail even tho we both went into a restricted driving area (which is where the last person was - maybe they had it registered) and drove up a bus lane! We were lucky. Hope our luck holds this time around!
