Drivers seethe as France lowers speed limit

PARIS: The Nationale 7 holds a cherished place in France’s popular culture as the Vacation Highway, leading generations of families south toward summer holidays on the Riviera before multi-lane motorways became the norm.

So when officials chose three stretches of the road back in 2015 to test lowering the speed limit to 80kph from 90kph, they surely knew they would rankle motorists.

Three years later some drivers have swung behind the change, but many others are still fuming.

“Yesterday I was going at 80kph and it felt like I was going to fall asleep,” said Gerard Laguette, a local business owner in CrozeHermitage, referring to the lower limit while driving on a 20km run to Valence in south-east France.

Such complaints – and opinion polls showing 74% of respondents against the move – haven’t stopped President Emmanuel Macron from pushing ahead with a countrywide rollout of the lower speed limits starting yesterday.

Officials say it’s the only way to reverse an alarming rise in road deaths, which reached 3,684 last year.

The 80kph limit on 400,000km of two-lane roads with no separating guardrail – often lined with trees in many parts of the country – aims to save 400 lives a year while also reducing auto emissions by 30%. But critics deride the measure as “Paris snobbery” and the latest proof that Macron is the “president of the rich” with little regard for the concerns of ordinary voters.

The 40-year-old former investment banker has recently come under fire for blasting the “crazy amounts of dough” spent on social security, even while ordering pricey new presidential china and a private pool for his official vacation residence.