On first arriving in France – driving

You land driving in France from the ferry or train. You are very likely to be on motorways for a good while as your first experience. Prepare! Think ahead. Food is probably better in the supermarkets than anything you bring with you.

Depending when you land, if you do not like giving money away to shysters, then have enough fuel to allow you to reach where you intend to first shop. The Channel ports all have supermarkets, but the northern retail centres [centres commerciaux] are usually somewhat seedy: OK for that quick dash across for the duty free, alright for a stop if you can afford the time and do not mind the hassle. Or you can plan ahead, carrying enough fuel to arrive at your first option further down the motorway, at a supermarket just outside a town next to the motorway. For road fuel prices in France.

So to finding that vital, elusive supermarket stocked with cheaper fuel and decent food. You need to know the names of several of the main chains: Carrefour, LeClerc, Geant or Casino, Auchan, Super U, Intermarché, Champion; then look for their road signs.

Almost every substantial town has a ring road, or rocade, often despoiled by vast human beehives for the poorer classes [habitations à loyer modéré or HLMs - modest rent housing], but enlivened with hoardings and large retail complexes There, the various huge stores live often alongside cafés, do-it-yourself [bricolage], garden centres [jardinier], many smaller shops and, of course, the cut-price service station.

french signposting

The French idea of signposting is rather slapdash and idiosyncratic, 5mn gauche [5 minutes left] or droit [right]. Well, it sort of depends on your speed, doesn’t it, and do they mean on this road or turn right? Expect some navigational messing around ’til you locate the gold mine, not to mention ever-impatient drivers as you dither.

Another favourite game is that when you want to turn left (across the oncoming traffic), you first have to turn right and then double back. Good hunting.

how the French often turn across oncoming traffic

Eventually you find the supermarket, not much different from the English chains, except often a great deal larger [called hypermarchés or grand surfaces] and with much wider range of goodies. They are somewhat cheaper than Britain, especially when the pound is relatively strong. As of mid-2011, it is the euro that is overvalued.

Another wonder of French signposting concerns speed. The French government, helped by speed cameras, is now fining drivers left, right and everywhere to reduce fatal road accidents and, of course, make more money. Despite this, departmental and communal administrations prefer trying to instruct drivers to drive more slowly by signing. Here is one example seen on a road with a 110 kph speed limit.

As you can see, by the relative sizes of the discs, these signs are well within 100 metres of the exit from the main road. I’m surprised that they haven’t put a radar trap here.

driving around

Finding your way around towns often is not simple.[5] You will often find yourself driving around in circles, trying to garner directions from them forriners who usually do not speak English too well. Of course, all the roads are the wrong way around, the road signs ain’t great,[6] and the French cannot drive. No, they seriously cannot.

France has twice the area of the whole UK to spread out about the same population, but until recently they still managed to kill twice as many people. The moment my wheels touch France, I drop my speed a full 10-15 mph. No, I’m not kidding! The French are not just dangerous drivers, they are widely and generally incompetent drivers.

Large numbers of French towns are very cramped , which can make parking a major problem, especially if you do not know your way around. Most French people drive around in tiny, little prams and the parking spaces are widely designed to accommodate that sort of vehicle. If you are going to hire a car and expect to spend a lot of time in towns, you should consider the possibility of booking a small hire car.

priority from the right

By the way, the bizarre priority from the right rule still exists in France, a piece of gallic logic created supposedly to regulate who goes first when two or more roads meet. Thus, on all roads, except those which have the sign below, the driver emerging from the rightmost road at an intersection has the priority to go cross that intersection first, or even to turn onto another road. So, you may find a driver stops on a larger road to allow a car waiting on a side road (to the right of the main road) to turn onto the larger road. Also, French cars will surprise you by jumping out of side roads and onto roundabouts ahead of you, on the basis of having priority from the right [priorité à droite].

priority sign

You should learn to recognise this sign. On roads with this sign, drivers have priority to when going across intersections or turning onto another road. There is also a version with a line through it, meaning “this road does not have priority”, that is cars coming from the right onto this road have the priority.

no-priority sign:
this is the sign to make your blood run cold

You are no longer are on a road with priority;
surely a skull-and-crossbones would be more fitting!

Roundabouts are generally exempt from this rule (cars should not just drive out onto the roundabout on the basis that they are to the right of cars already going round, although often they do) - note the cedez le passage/give way signs.

These mad priority signs, a positive clear sign telling you that idiots cannot jump out from your right and a negative sign (that has a cancelling line across) telling you that other drivers may jump out ahead of you, appear to have been developed by French bureaucrats attempting to correct the mess they had made previously with the generalised priority from the right rule.

Even today, I have had a driver stop on a main road to let me out of a side road, with the usual screeching of brakes as others try to stop behind him; while still a considerable percentage regularly jump out onto roundabouts against oncoming traffic. Doubtless, the powers cannot admit to making this incredible foul-up, so I return you to my original advice: drop your speed in France and recognise that the French just cannot drive - assuming you want to live.

Just to reassure you, it can become even more confusing. You may see one of these skull-and-crossbone signs with a number such as 400m in a block below the sign. It isn’t fully clear whether this means that the dreaded sign applies to the next four hundred metres, or it will apply in 400 metres time for who knows how long. Here, perhaps, you are expected to use your initiative. My response is to switch into double terrified mode and pray vigorously, without, of course, taking my eyes from drivers probably planning mayhem.

The priorité à droite rule, known in English as ‘the nearside rule’, was adopted by the Paris International Automobile Convention in 1926, then confirmed in Geneva in 1949 and in Vienna in 1968.

The priorité à droite rule started in Paris, instigated in 1910 by a Prefect of police, M. Lépine. Prior to this, the rules of priority on the road were very complicated, right of way being given according to the social rank of each passenger. Thus, it is said that passengers had to get off a coach to compare their titles and so decide who would pass first, according to the degrees of nobility!

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other driving ‘delights’

The Italians are mad, but good, drivers; the French are generally just stupid. The Spanish live somewhere in between! There is none of the habitual lane discipline you see in Britain; straying across the white lines is optional. As you are driving on the ‘other side’ of the road, you may well have an instinct to go the other way around a roundabout, or pull across to the now unfashionable side of the road. If you are unaccustomed to driving a continental, left-hand drive vehicle, you will have a great deal more to cope with on top of that. So, if you wanna live, drop your speed and drive much more defensively than most sane people drive, even than in Britain.

Maybe this will start to change now, as even the French central government has had enough and is heavily cracking down on the situation. They are bringing in speed cameras [7], and are already becoming rather keen as it is realised how much money can be made from them. A whole raft of spot fines is now being enthusiastically applied for the most trivial and ‘creative’ infractions, for instance: 80€ for forgetting to turn off your fog lights. If you are stopped, you’d better hope that the flic has his quota for the day, or is after bigger game.

Another ‘creative’ infraction worthy of fining and deduction of points is not using the direction indicator when turning or overtaking, even on an almost empty dual carriageway, and turning on or off a roundabout. Because of this, the French will neurotically leave their indicator going when driving on the outer lanes of a motorway to show that they are OVERTAKING, and then indicate when they are going back to the inside lane.

Another French finickety neuroticism is only parking in spaces facing in the direction of travel. That will be another fifty euros, Monsieur; ker-ching. It is important to realise that people from abroad, or from another French department, are a delightful source of painless revenue, subsidising local taxes.

On sunny days, during the tourist season, it is common to see gendarmes gathering like flies around roundabouts - so much better and more profitable than being cooped up indoors.

While the motorways are generally of good standard, my impression is they have narrower lanes, but I’ve never checked. Once you are off the motorways, road quality varies considerably. France is much more decentralised than the UK, so every local commune [local authority] makes its own decisions. This means you can be tootling along a road with a good, well-kept surface and suddenly, without warning, the quality can drop dramatically as you move from one commune to another.

Other amusements you may run across:

• Barrelling down a motorway, or even a minor road, one may suddenly be confronted by a fellow in a hard hat waving a red flag. Slam on the brakes, hope you don’t skid or the idiot behind doesn’t ram you - tailgating is a very popular hobby in France. Only to discover that that the man is, in fact, a metal robot with a moving, jointed arm, just there for decoration. It is not some panicking Frog signalling a major accident.
• A distinct aversion to cats eyes (not invented here, or economising?) or white lines. This, of course, makes driving at night more difficult than it need be, especially when the road anonymously grades off into grass and then a ditch. However, I have seen, in vast white capitals on the road ahead of me, absence de signalisation horizontale. In English – no horizontal signals, that is no white lines. It took me an age to work out what it meant.

No, I’m not joking. Drop your speed at least 10 mph, and live longer.

autoroutes

In France, you pay through the nose for most motorways [autoroutes] (there are a few free motorways, around large cities and in Northern France) but there is one great joy and luxury that comes with this cost – an immense variety of aires. Read more about the autoroute network and the more interesting aires in motorway aires, introduction, also accessible from the drop-down menu at the top of this page.

Answer to a frequently asked question
The distance from Bordeaux to the Spanish border is about 120 miles/200 km.
You drive on the A63/N10/A63.

Journey planning

Also see pre-route planning with GoogleMaps.

Use a large road atlas, such as the one published by Michelin, for your preliminary trip planning. Once you have determined the general route, then use on-line planners which can give detailed information on distances, toll and fuel costs, and the location of speed cameras.

For more local maps, use Institut Geographique National (IGN) Blue Series maps. IGN is the French equivalent of the Ordinance Survey in the United Kingdom. Blue Series maps are 1:25,000 or 1 cm to 250 metres. The maps can be bought in a local Presse/newspaper shop or supermarket. However, this is a little haphazard, especially for the high-scale versions, as these places usually only hold maps local to them.

Mappy is an excellent, if slightly clumsy, on-line road planner. It also gives you the option of checking your toll costs for using motorways.

Map24 is another online route-planning site, with several Java-powered interactive facilities. Although in French for the map of France, Map24 is mostly intuitive to use and can even be fun. It is possible to look at the map related to your chosen itinerary in various degrees of three dimensions [VUE 3-D], as if low-flying over the land. The amount of zoom can (almost too) easily be changed [ZOOM]; while when at least one intermediate way-point is specified, you can select which part of the journey to study [NAVIGATION].

Remember to prepare your car to be both legal and safe in France.

radar speed cameras

During 2006, the frequent contradictory, badly placed road signs have even come to the notice of the French TV news and the government. Now it is official, you can expect to see consecutively speed signs of 70kph, 90kph, 50kph within a few hundred metres/yards of each other.

In contrast, French speed cameras are well forewarned -
all changed, see above.
Progressively, the large prominent signs (below), about half a kilometre before every speed camera is being removed. These signs were either to the side (right) or in the centre of the road, occuring sometimes on dual carriageways or motorways. The location of each camera is no longer identified by French government web sites/maps. If you generate an itinerary using Mappy, it will locate (approximately) where there are any speed cameras on your route.

Also, various motorist groups do provide them, usually by region. Here is one such fixed radar/camera web site, which is being kept up to date. [For other similar pages, try searching on “radar routes france carte”]

French road sign warning of a speed camera ahead, now being withdrawn

However, although the warning sign is prominent, the camera that follows is often placed discretely - under a bridge, behind a road barrier, near a roadside planting. Also be aware that French fixed cameras are not set on high supports as in the UK, but are attached to a short support near the ground. There is no reason in France to receive a speeding ticket from a fixed camera, the signs like that photographed above are very prominent and usually several hundred yards before the camera - see a sign and make damn sure your speed is comfortably below the local speed limit. You can even take pleasure in watching the cars rushing past who are then flashed by the camera.

    
French fixed radar speed cameras
left: photographs front of vehicle; right: photographs rear of vehicle

As well as the 1,000 fixed cameras on French roads, installed since October 2003, there are also many mobile cameras used by gendarmes. These may be set up at the roadside, or looking out from the back of a police estate car. These cameras should also be signed by a smaller, mobile warning sign. Remember les flics are out to meet targets and to make money. Therefore, they may ‘forget’ to put out the sign.

French speed cameras send two photos and accompanying data to a central processing point that, after assessment that the driver was speeding, automatically sends out the paperwork demanding the fine.

Fines are on sliding scales, depending how much above the local speed limit the car was going. Be aware also, that the fines are accompanied by a deduction of one or more points from the driving licence, again on a sliding scale.

If you receive such a demand, it has to be paid first (with the amount doubling if there is delay) and any dispute can be made later.

However, as a foreign visitor, you may well escape paying a fine, unless you are caught by a roadside gendarme who demands an immediate fine, or unless your car is registered in another European Union country that has a bilateral agreement.

• For town speed limits, the delimiter is the town name plaque. On leaving the town there is another plaque with a black diagonal line through the name. This marks the return to the open road speed limit.
• In some villages, the speed limit goes right down to 30 km/h, or even 20 km/h.

Euroland is gradually moving to reciprocal recognition and shared data record storage of car registration. The first countries that are moving towards such arrangements are Germany, Holland, Spain. This situation will be complete when the proposed European driving licence is in place.

April 2010: Permission has been given for a further 3,000 surveillance cameras to be installed in towns. The French police are using them to watch for ‘bad’ actions by drivers, in particular stopping or parking in illegal locations. As towns become more crowded with traffic and parking is often reduced to provide more pedestrianised areas, finding somewhere to stop is becoming more irksome. Note that fines can be 2000€ or more.

end notes

1. This website (in French, but pretty intuitive to use) provides comparative fuel prices for each department, or towns within a department, as well as price on each motorway [autoroute]. It also indicates the price movements.
   
   
2. Based on approximately 45 miles per gallon, or 10 miles per litre.
   
   
3. Motorway tolls are often being raised, amounting to roughly an additional 50% in recent years. Because tolls cost nearly as much as the fuel you will use on the motorway section of your journey, your travel expenditure on motorways can be almost as much as double the amount you paid at the pump. Note that increases in fuel prices are now (2011) running ahead of toll price increases, so tolls will not be such a large proportion of autoroute driving costs, though those have increased widely during 2010-2011.
   
   

   Distance	Fuel cost	Tolls
   Current examples:
   275 miles	44€	28.40€
   122 miles	20€	16.60€
   [Based on supermarket diesel prices during May 2008, and average fuel consumption of 9 miles/litre, approx. 41 miles/UK gal.]

   
   

   Conversion table	imperial [UK] gallon	US gallon	litre
   imperial (UK) gallon	1	1.2	4.546
   US gallon	0.83	1	3.785
   litre	0.22	0.26	1

   
   
   
4. Remember, the difference will change according to the current exchange rate.
   
   
5. Getting lost is all too easy! This is fairly frequent in France because French authorities often seem to be allergic to upward-pointing arrows for straight ahead (mustn’t point - it’s rude, and you are pointing to God. Or is it Descartian logic? Going up is impossible!)
   
   
6. Directional road signs in France are not set out to the standard of, say, British ones. There is a real preference for putting road signs ...
   • facing the opposite direction to the way you are going (so, for instance, two circuits round roundabouts are necessary)
   • or after whatever is being signed (so retracing is necessary),
   • or hiding behind trees etc
   • without including the road number
   • using the name for the most obscure little village instead of the one for the nearest big town
     
     
7. Here is a page with links to maps of automatic radar positions in France generally, and in the Paris region, together with a verbal list of the positions, and more are being placed all the time. There is also a FAQ (in French).
   Mappy, the online route calculator, as well as giving the motorway toll charges, shows fixed radar camera positions on the calculated itineraries. There are also hand-held and vehicle-mounted versions in use, which the government map and Mappy cannot show. The goverment are also introducing technology to nab you for travelling too close (less than 2 seconds gap).
   
   
8. 
   

   Evolution of diesel [gazole] prices at supermarkets in France since 2001
   Jul. 2001	0.755€/l	Jul. 2005	1.02€/l
   Jan. 2002	0.70€/l	Jan. 2006	0.999€/l
   Jul. 2002	0.739€/l	Jul. 2006	1.09€/l
   Jan 2003	.0789€/l	Jan. 2007	1.00€/l
   Jul. 2003	0.72€/l	Jul. 2007	1.058€/l
   Jan. 2004	0.78€/l	Jan. 2008	1.17€/l
   Jul. 2004	0.84€/l	early May 2008	1.295€/l
   Jan. 2005	0.87€/l	late May 2008	1.428€/l
   Apr. 2010	1.136€	Aug.2011	1.274 €

   
   
   
9. Historic information and figures for reference:
   Petrol is, approximately, the same price as in the UK, but diesel is, approximately, 25% cheaper. Well, it is from the supermarkets.[8]

   Buying fuel from supermarkets is approximately 15-20% cheaper than on the motorways.[1] You will save, perhaps, the equivalent of up to 1p per mile if you use supermarket petrol, and with diesel you can save most of 3p per mile compared to the UK [prices during July 2004].[2]

   But if you drive on the tolled motorways, the tolls will cost you approximately 8p a mile[3] (about the same as the fuel cost).
   

10. From 1 July 2008, it is a legal requirement [linked page in French] that vehicles driving on roads in France are equipped with:

    • At least one reflective, high visibility (dayglo) waistcoat, kept easily accessible in the occupants’ part of the vehicle, not in the boot (trunk). Sensibly, you would have one for each occupant. Often, they clothe the seat backs for easy access.
    
    • A reflective warning triangle, to be put out about 30 metres from the car (or more, if necessary). It is obligatory to use the triangle on the motorway, except if doing so might put the driver’s life in danger. If you aren’t sure, don’t - putting it out near racing cars and lorries is too dangerous. (Yes, contradiction is common in French law.) Wait behind the autoroute safety barrier, away from your car. Turn on the hazard warning lights if they are available.
    
    [The fine for non-compliance with either regulation is 135€, but remains at 135€ if found guilty on both counts [linked page in French]. If relevant, the fine is reduced to 90€ for prompt payment.]
    [Note that in Spain, two such triangles are required.]
    
    • “at least one breathalyser kit”. However, the Highway Code does recommend that “for drivers who choose the disposable breathalyzer, it is advisable to be in possession of two breathalyser tests: one to test and a back-up”. The kits must be “unexpired, unused and in accordance with NF” [French official norms].

    There are two types of kit: the expensive [100 € or more], electronic kit which is reuseable; and the cheap [1 to 3 €], throwaway, chemical kit. In France, one of the places to buy these is in the local pharmacy.

    Cars and other vehicles with two or more wheels (mopeds, 50cc or less, are excluded) will be checked before they even hit French roads, with random checks in the Channel Tunnel and on cross-channel ferries.

    Since 2006, drink-driving has been the greatest cause of the over 4,000 road deaths a year, greater even than those caused by speeding. Drink resulted in nearly a third of road deaths, a number “virtually unchanged for 10 years” and “far superior” to England (17%) or Germany (10%), with similar levels of alcohol consumption.

    Since it is illegal to drive in France with any dud lighting, a complete set of bulbs is a sensible addition, as well as making sure that you still have the vehicle’s user manual to help in changing the lights. But note, large numbers of French vehicles do not have all their lights functioning.
    
    A torch and functioning batteries, a first aid kit and a fire extinguisher in good condition could also be considered wise additions. Also required for British drivers is a GB sticker put on the left rear of the car near the number plate, unless you have number plates that incorporate a small GB plaque. [This is a legal requirement, so you could be fined if you forget.]
    
    You must also redirect your headlights so they point away from oncoming traffic, which will be approaching towards the left of the driver instead of the right. Plastic ‘headlight redirectors’ are easily obtainable from car accessory or motorway shops. They are a little tricky to put on correctly the first time, so take your time and check the instructions and your result. If you buy fairly solid ‘headlight redirectors’, you can remove and save them for next time you visit the continent. Electricians’ insulating tape is effective for retaping the plastic to your headlights. The tape is waterproof and so will keep sticking through French summer thunderstorms.
    
    And do not forget that you must have your papers - passport, driving license, international insurance, car registration document (called la carte grise in France) with you, close to hand, when you drive. If stopped, these are what the traffic gendarmes will ask for first. It is also required that you have your identification documents with you, when you go out in France.
    
    

11. Michelin Tourist & Motoring A4 spiral Atlas of France 2008
    ISBN-10: 206713597X
    ISBN-13: 978-2067135970
    £8.44 [amazon.co.uk] /
    $25.49 [amazon.com]
    
    Note that these are details for the spiralbound version of the atlas. There other, non-spiralbound versions available.
    Americans may decide to wait to purchase a road atlas, if they need one, once they have arrived in Europe.
    
    
12. You can order IGN maps online from their website [in English] by clicking this map on the left of their page:
    
    The instructions on each succeeding page are in English and easy to follow. Note that postage is currently 4.70€ (the UK is classed as a EU country “near to or with a border with France”).
    
    
13. AA index page for monthly fuel price reports.
    Fuel price report archive 2000 - 2010.

Work notes

Where to stay

Quick
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email abelard@abelard.org

© abelard, 2008,2007,2006,2005,2004 (05 april )
v.2.0, 28.05.2008

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the address for this document is http://www.abelard.org/france/first-arrival.php