Do French drivers have feisty Latin blood?
The Champs Elysées is a well known location to witness the erratic behavior of French drivers.
Ever since I was a boy the notion that French drivers are the World’s most erratic has always been at the center of the odd stereotyped joke. But looking at the driving attitudes in countries like Italy where red lights are considered as street decorations, or India whose recent rise in car sales has created havoc on their city's roads, are never mentioned.
Admittedly, the French driving style is rather unconventional and borderline obnoxious in comparison to the unwritten script of civilized laws the British seem to obey.
Getting behind the wheel of a car in France inherently means you are out to kill, swerve, under-cut your fellow drivers. The horn is a compulsory part of the mind games that take place when trying to intimidate the old lady or recently qualified driver who seems to be in the wrong lane.
Patience goes out the window and sheer folly takes control.
In Britain, apart from a few impulsive ‘boy racers’, giving way to somebody is considered as the more respected choice. The mentality being; the more civil and reasonable the driver the more highly esteemed he or she is considered to be.
In 2005 France's notoriously aggressive drivers were urged to make the roads safer by adopting the "legendary civility" of the British.
The French road safety association marked "national road courtesy day" by publishing images of an enraged driver, fist clenched, to show the behavior it was trying to stamp out. These campaigners held the British up as models of respect and consideration.
According to recent figures released by ‘yesinsurance’ there are over 3000 road accidents in Britain every year, half as much as in France.
Hence why speed cameras are on the rise in France and road fines for speeding have dramatically increased in recent years. But large cities like Paris seem to have avoided the recent trend of installing cameras as sporadically as possible.
Cities in Britain on the other hand can boast a surplus of speed cameras, hiding many of them as discreetly as possible behind street furniture and lampposts, catching the average driver unaware.
Regardless, why is it that the French are considered to be the worst drivers the planet has ever seen? Go to Egypt, India or Italy and the French will look like angels.
Well as a person who has learnt how to drive in the US I had this fear of French drivers. I've since lived in the UK where I did fall in love with the British selfless attitude
Then upon my return here in France I had to take the French Driver's License and even do the entire theoretical training exam. Well here is the shocking bit: The theoretical exam is very French in that it's incredibly dense but no one follows it later on. You have to calculate realtime stopping distance vs breaking distances, know your alcohol absorption rates by a human body, know tons of technical things that made my glider pilot exam pale by contrast. It's the same in Germany and maybe in Italy, the exams are amazingly long and complex. But once they have it, they wilfully break the rules/laws. They will stop at a red sign and then move on while you sit there stupefied. Well at least they did bother stopping, Italian drivers here (in southern France) won't even stop at a stop sign.
US drivers can be said to be "bad" because they get distracted a lot but they'll never dream of breaking the easy rules they are given. Latin drivers are pretty alert and good, but they'll just gamble and love to break the rules as much as they can. But somehow they won't take incredibly stupid risks. That honour is left to german drivers who usually follow you by 10 cm at 170 km/h on the autobahn just to prove that they are "better than you" in some way that still escapes me.