Need For Speed French
Jillian President
Before starting your journey, you will need to make sure you have all your relevant documents including your UK driving licence, V5C logbook, most recent MOT certificate, car insurance and European breakdown cover. Any driver in France, must have at least third-party car insurance to drive in the country.
If you are taking your caravan to France, then there are also two speed limits. If the total weight is under 3.5t, then there is no difference to that of a normal car. However, if the total weight is over the threshold, then motorway driving is limited to 90 kph.
Those of you driving through larger cities will need to purchase a French clean air sticker as they are now mandatory in certain areas. If you do not have one you may receive a fine or not be able to enter certain cities at certain times.
French roads have a variable maximum speed limit that depends on weather conditions. In dry weather rural 2- or 3-lane roads are limited to 80 km/h, 4-lane expressways (in rural areas) 110 km/h, and highways (in rural areas, when classified as motorway) 130 km/h. When raining, the limits are respectively lowered to 80,[1] 100, and 110 km/h. Urban speed limit of 50 km/h is unaffected by weather. The general speed limit is lowered to 50 km/h on all roads in the fog or other low-visibility conditions if visibility is under 50 metres.
Those limits are not systematically signaled as they are the default limit. For instance the name of a town or village at its entry is an implicit limitation to 50 km/h; the crossed name at the exit is the corresponding end of limit. This matches the way 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic defined a built-up area (in English, or agglomération in French). However, additional 50 km/h speed limit signs, or other speed limit sign, might be added to make it more explicit.
Vehicles over 3.5 metric tons of maximum total weight have lower speed limits. Lorries of more than 12 metric tons (except dangerous goods and trailers that may have lower limits) may not exceed 50 km/h in urban areas (even if the speed limit was raised to 70 km/h), 90 km/h on highways, and 80 km/h elsewhere. Lorries under 12 metric tons but over 3.5 have the same limits except 90 km/h on 4-lane expressways. Buses may not exceed 100 km/h on highways and 4-lane expressways.
Minimum or recommended speeds are very rarely marked in France, though vehicles incapable of sustaining 60 km/h are not allowed on highways/motorways and you must be driving at 80 km/h or higher to use the left-most lane of a highway/motorway.
From 1 July 2018, 80 km/h has become the default maximum speed limit on a network of around 400,000 kilometers of road. Protests against the lowering of the speed limit on rural roads to 80 km/h were held due to the unpopularity of the decision, on the assumption that an 80 km/h speed is too slow and that there has been insufficient assessment done. This contributed in French rural areas to the beginning of the "Gilets Jaunes" (Yellow vests movement).
In 2005, a governmental report advised lowering the higher highway speed to 115 km/h in order to save fuel and reduce accident risks, but this proposal was badly received. Since 2002, the French government has installed a number of automatic radar guns on autoroutes, routes nationales, and other major thoroughfares. These are in addition to radar manned by the French National Police and the Gendarmerie. The French authorities have credited this increase in traffic enforcement with a 50% drop in road fatalities from 2002 to 2006 (except on Motorways, where the fatalities rose by 15% between 2002 and 2006).
On 9 January 2018 the national government announced 80 km/h (instead of 90) as a standard speed limit on secondary network, due to the many fatalities still happening on these roads. This was after experimentation which included a speed limit change from 90 to 80 between 2010-2015 and 2015-2017 which resulted in a reduction in road fatalities. The 80 km/h national limit entered into force on 1 July 2018.
While the decision will not be popular with French motorists, we know from experience in the UK that those roads are responsible for far more deaths than motorways and dual carriageways. We also know that speed is one of the biggest contributory factors in injury accidents.[7]
Speed limit change helped the French to save 700 euros millions including 1200[clarification needed] in accidents and 300 millions in gasoline while 800 euro millions were lost in lost time.[17]
France has a large network of high-speed rail lines. As of June 2021, the French high-speed rail network comprises 2,800 km (1,740 mi) of tracks,[1] making it one of the largest in Europe and the world. As of early 2023, new lines are being constructed or planned. The first French high-speed railway, the LGV Sud-Est, linking the suburbs of Paris and Lyon, opened in 1981 and was at that time the only high-speed rail line in Europe.
In addition to serving destinations across France, the high-speed rail system is also connected to the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The SNCF, France's state-owned rail company, operates both a premium service (TGV inOui) and a budget service (Ouigo). The French national high-speed rail network follows the spoke-and-hub model, centered on Paris. Besides its main operator, the SNCF, it is also used by Eurostar, Thalys, Deutsche Bahn, Trenitalia France, RENFE, and the Swiss Federal Railways.
The newest high-speed lines allow speeds of 320 km/h (199 mph) in normal operation: originally LGVs were defined as lines permitting speeds greater than 200 km/h (124 mph), revised to 250 km/h (155 mph). Like most high-speed trains in Europe, TGVs also run on conventional tracks (French: lignes classiques), at the normal maximum speed for those lines, up to 220 km/h (137 mph). This allows them to reach secondary destinations or city centres without building new tracks all the way, reducing costs compared to the magnetic levitation train project in Japan, for example, or complete high-speed networks with a different gauge from the surrounding conventional networks, in Spain and Japan, for example.
High-speed railway track construction in France has a few key differences from normal railway lines. The radii of curves are larger so that trains can traverse them at higher speeds without increasing the centripetal acceleration felt by passengers. The radii of LGV curves have historically been greater than 4 km (2.5 mi): new lines have minimum radii of 7 km (4.3 mi) to allow for future increases in speed.
LGVs can incorporate steeper gradients than normal. This facilitates planning and reduces their cost of construction. The high power/weight and adhesive weight/total weight ratios of TGVs allow them to climb much steeper grades than conventional trains. The considerable momentum at high speeds also helps to climb these slopes very quickly without greatly increasing energy consumption. The Paris-Sud-Est LGV has gradients of up to 3.5% (on the German NBS high-speed line between Cologne and Frankfurt they reach 4%). On a high-speed line it is possible to have greater superelevation (cant), since all trains are travelling at the same (high) speed and a train stopping on a curve is a very rare event. Curve radii in high-speed lines have to be large, but increasing the superelevation allows for tighter curves while supporting the same train speed. Allowance for tighter curves can reduce construction costs by reducing the number and/or length of tunnels or viaducts and the volume of earthworks.
Track alignment is more precise than on normal railway lines, and ballast is in a deeper-than-normal profile, resulting in increased load-bearing capacity and track stability. LGV track is anchored by more sleepers/ ties per kilometre than normal, and all are made of concrete, either mono- or bi-bloc, the latter consisting of two separate blocks of concrete joined by a steel bar. Heavy rail (UIC 60) is used and the rails are more upright, with an inclination of 1 in 40 as opposed to 1 in 20 on normal lines. Use of continuously welded rails in place of shorter, jointed rails yields a comfortable ride at high speed, without the "clickety-clack" vibrations induced by rail joints.
The points/switches are different from those on the lignes Classique's. Every LGV set of points incorporates a swingnose crossing (coeur à pointe mobile or 'moveable point frog'), which eliminates the gap in rail support that causes shock and vibration as wheels of a train pass over the 'frog' of conventional points. Eliminating these gaps makes the passage of a TGV over LGV switches imperceptible to passengers, reduces stresses on wheels and track, and permits much higher speeds, 160 km/h (99 mph). At junctions, such as the junction on the TGV Atlantique where the line to Le Mans diverges from the line to Tours, special points designed for higher speeds are installed which permit a diverging speed of 574 km/h (357 mph).
The diameter of tunnels is greater than normally required by the size of the trains, especially at entrances. This limits the effects of air pressure changes and noise pollution such as tunnel boom, which can be problematic at TGV speeds.
LGVs are reserved primarily for TGVs. One reason for this is that line capacity is sharply reduced when trains of differing speeds are mixed, as the interval between two trains then needs to be large enough that the faster one cannot over-take the slower one between two passing loops. Passing freight and passenger trains also constitute a safety risk, as cargo on freight cars could be destabilised by the air turbulence caused by the TGV.
The permitted axle load on LGV lines is 17 t, imposed to prevent heavy rolling stock from prematurely damaging the very accurate track alignment ('surface') required for high-speed operation. Conventional trains hauled by locomotives are generally not allowed, since the axle load of a typical European electric locomotive exceeds 20 t. The only freight trains that are generally permitted are mail trains run by the French postal service, using specially adapted TGV rolling stock. TGV power cars, the lightweight streamlined locomotives at both ends of TGV trainsets, are within the 17 t limit, but special design efforts were needed (a 'hunt for kilograms,' chasse aux kilos) to keep the mass of the double-deck TGV Duplex trains within the 17 t limit when they were introduced in the 1990s.
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