Road rage: Drivers seethe as France lowers speed limit from today
Officials say it’s the only way to reverse an alarming rise in road deaths, which reached 3,684 last year
The Nationale 7 holds a cherished place in France’s popular culture as the Vacation Highway, leading generations of families south towards 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 80 kilometres per hour from 90, 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 80 and it felt like I was going to fall asleep,” said Gerard Laguette, a local business owner in Croze-Hermitage.
Such complaints — and opinion polls showing 74 per cent of respondents against the move — haven’t stopped President Emmanuel Macron from pushing ahead with a countrywide roll-out of the lower speed limits starting today.
Officials say it’s the only way to reverse an alarming rise in road deaths, which reached 3,684 last year. The 80km/h limit on 400,000 kilometres 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 per cent.
But critics deride the measure as “Paris snobbery” and the latest proof that Macron is the “president of the rich”.
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. The lower speed limit is widely seen as an easy way to fill state coffers with more tickets.