The Need to Speed

The other week, my French husband Maxime received his FIFTH speeding fine since moving to Australia. And he is NOT a happy frog. But how is a Frenchman used to driving at 170 kph supposed to cope? The limit on French motorways is 130kph, by the way. Not that this figure ever mattered to Maxime - while he is meticulously careful about things he has respect for, such as cheese or his shoes, he is completely blasé about those he doesn’t, such as speed limits. He considers it a persecution of the population (especially the French population) and has very quickly learned to use the phrase ‘revenue raising’ when spotting a police car on a slope.

'Why is everyone obeying the speed limit?' Maxime asked when he first visited Australia.'How can you bear to go so slowly? It’s outrageous!'

'It’s not that we like driving slowly, it’s just that you’ll get caught,' said Dad. As Maxime has since found out. Often.

Since then, Dad's been trying to teach Maxime how to spot the the cameras. In fact, the other weekend, Maxime spotted his first unmarked car with camera. A proud moment - and hopefully a money-saving one. He’s also programmed his car to beep at him whenever he goes too fast. So now, of course, we drive around in a constantly beeping car.

But Maxime’s not being entirely selfish in wishing the speed limits were raised. 

'Think how much further out from the city people could live and still commute!' he says. 'With a sensible speed limit [i.e., 200kph], commute times would be slashed!'

That way, he could live next to his favourite Red Hill bakery, have a leisurely breakfast with baguette and quality organic-not-from-Denmark butter and make it to the city in time for work.

'Besides,' Maxime persists, 'the faster you drive, the more you are concentrating. It's the too-slow speed limits which are dangerous.'

'Look, it’s not as bad as Switzerland,' I point out to him. 

In Switzerland, they have signs saying 30kph with a snail on it, saying ‘langsam aber sicher’, slow but safe. With limits like that, when we were living in Europe, Maxime understandably had a very bad time on the road in Switzerland. At Swiss intersections, they sometimes place a traffic cop in a what appears to be a compost bin, where he sits directing traffic like a dalek. I’m not sure how, but one day Maxime actually drove into the one of the dalek’s bins. Which is how the Swiss police got hold of his French address. After that, such an endless stream of driving fines came in that Maxime finally announced that he would have to give up driving in Switzerland as it was getting too expensive (the idea of slowing down was not to be thought of).

So what's it like driving in high-speed France? I thought getting accustomed to driving on the right would be my main issue with driving in France. Nope. My main problem driving in France was the French. The French drive like they have a death-wish. And it’s not necessarily for them. All except the most elderly, who drive like a wilted vegetable. The consequence of this is that the speed differential between lanes is enormous on freeways: the limit of 130kph is blithely disregarded by both classes of French driver - the one cruising at 170, the other at 70.  If you try to overtake, say, a bendy carrot, a crazed maniac barrels up behind you, trying to intimidate you into the other lane by flashing his lights, gesticulating and tailgating you intimately.

The French also freely interpret road rules. They reverse over roundabouts, drive on the wrong side of the road (that one actually hit us), or, - a particular favourite - indicate one way and turn the other. That's if they bothered to indicate at all. They either don’t understand the concept of 'give way' or they don’t care. The slow driver, entombed in a clapped-out Peugeot 205, loves nothing better than pulling out in front of you. Neither is it unusual to see him driving up the middle of the road, straddling the median strip, cheerfully oblivious to the presence of any other cars on the road. But my fellow drivers seemed to regard erratic driving as normal and either didn’t react or gave a polite bip on the horn. An Australian would have dished out a long blast and an 'Oi! Where’s the fucking indicator, ya clown?' 

The upshot of this randomness on the road was that all my relatives, of my parents’ generation at least, refused to drive in France at all, much to the mystification of Stéphane and his family.

‘Do we drive this badly in Australia? I can’t remember,' I asked Dad once when he was over visiting us.

‘No,’ he said.

And now that I’m back home, I’m still getting used to the fact that in Australia, the car in front of me will almost certainly behave normally. Bizarre!