2024-08-07 08:24:12
It is over sixteen thousand[16,000]. Peak off season is July and August, exactly when I’m traveling.
The largest slaughterhouses in France in 1971 were the Alpes Maritimes, where I started, and the Bouches-du-Rhône, where I spent eight hours by the side of a highway trying to to leave Marseille.
I don’t remember seeing an accident. The statistics suggest that I was lucky.
France, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, was one of the most dangerous countries in western Europe in which to travel by car (or to cross the road). Between 1960 and 1971, road deaths doubled.
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France has made great progress in road safety over the past half century. Next month’s final figures will confirm that the death toll on French roads in 2023 is (the Covid lockdown years aside) the lowest since 1926 – at least 3,200 people killed.
Deaths on French roads are also more frequent than in the UK or Germany or Spain. They are no longer killers”The French distinction” of the 1970s.
When people tell you that France is “no longer France” and that everything was better in the old days – safer streets, better food, greener grass, yellow lights, crunchier baguettes, cheaper wine , the smell of cheese – remember these figures.
In 1971 and 1972, France lost the equivalent of a small-to-medium-sized city each year to road deaths. And that’s just the deaths. Many thousands of people were seriously injured or lost their lives.
In 1972, the year after my epic journey, the number of people who died on the road reached 16,545. If deaths occur within 30 days of an accident, as EU rules now require, the annual French death toll in 1971 and 1972 was more like 18,000.
France and the media finally decided that the killing must stop. One road death helped prevent many thousands.
Marie-Antoinette Ion, wife of the Gaullist Prime Minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas died in a road accident in 1970. On the day he left office on July 5th 1972, Chaban-Delmas created a ministerial committee for road safety.
One of his first acts, in March 1973, was to broadcast a TV public service which showed aerial footage of all 16,000 residents of the town of Mazamet in southwestern France lying in the streets playing dead. .
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Between 1973 and 2002, road traffic in France almost tripled but the number of car accidents and those who were injured was reduced by half. Public awareness campaigns help. So are the new rules that seem basic now.
Speed limits did not exist in France outside cities until 1973. Wearing seat belts in the front seats of cars was not mandatory until 1979. Helmets for motorcycles were optional until 1976.
Road deaths continued to decline steadily in France in the last quarter of the 20th century, as they did in many other countries. Safer vehicles, safer roads (ie highways) and improved medical care all help.
At the beginning of the 21st century, however, France once again fell far behind neighboring countries, including the UK. Attempts to impose emergency laws by the centre-left government of Lionel Jospin in 1997-2002 were shot down by centre-right politicians as an attack on civil liberties.
In 2002, when he was re-elected president, Jacques Chirac made a heavy-handed comeback on center-right attitudes. He announced road safety to be one of the “missions” of his second term. Traffic laws, and even speeding laws, will be (shock-abuse-shock) in effect.
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At the end of the 1990s, when I came to live in France, there were no radar speed traps, You could do 160kph on the highway and 130kph on two-way roads with almost no fear of punishment. Not that I did, of course. Of course not.
Chirac changed all that – the biggest success of his surprisingly empty house in 12 years at the Elysée Palace. Speed traps are now common, to the chagrin of rural France. They are one of the causes of the Yellow vest movement in 2018-9.
Excessive speed is one of the biggest causes of road accidents and road deaths. Since speed traps have appeared, the cost of death has also begun a downward spiral.
Last year, 3,170 people died on French roads (using the 30-day EU law but excluding foreign bodies). This is the lowest number since 1926 when there were 809,000 cars on French roads. There are now 38,900,000 cars and vans and trucks – almost 50 times.
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So we are all well on the roads of France? Much better, of course. French roads are more than twice as safe as US roads. But driving in France is still more dangerous than in many neighboring countries.
According to the World Health Organization, France suffers five road deaths a year for every 100,000 people. The UK has 2.9 – almost 50 less. Germany and Spain have 3.7, Switzerland 2.2 and Italy 5.2. The US has 12.9.
France is a vast and empty country. It has, accordingly, fewer rural roads than Germany or the UK. Two-lane, country roads are much more dangerous than highways or city roads. That may explain the continued difference. According to my experience, however, the problem is not only French rural roads. He is also a French countryside driver.
Why is it that if you try to obey the speed limit, your rear bumper magically turns into a huge magnet for other cars?
PS I finally arrived in Cherbourg in August 1971. The most dangerous moment was my last night in Normandy. I fell asleep in a field and woke up to see a herd standing almost on top of me.
What are your experiences of driving on French roads? Do you find French drivers scary? Share your views in the comments section below
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