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Never able to pay attention to them as I'm hyper alert to « CÉDEZ LE PASSAGE » signs, or the absence of one telling me I don't have to give way, which means I d
by angry_octet 7mo ago
Never able to pay attention to them as I'm hyper alert to « CÉDEZ LE PASSAGE » signs, or the absence of one telling me I don't have to give way, which means I don't have priority, and some random local could barrel out at 90km/h.
- ninja3925 7mo agoThese signs are mostly on the highway
- amatecha 7mo agoInteresting, I've driven in 15 different European countries and found France to be one of the easiest and most chill. I mean, on the highways and city streets, anyways -- not so much on the farmland single-lane roads that shockingly have a speed limit of 90km/h lol ... but regardless, the "people merging in from the right have the right-of-way" actually makes sense to me since they're engaging in the most "high-pressure" action, while those of us strolling along on the highway can just adjust our speed to give them space, or change lanes ahead of time as needed.
- rkomorn 7mo agoI don't think they're talking about merging on a highway? Sounds like they're talking about the fact that at an intersection, unless signaled otherwise, the people coming from the right have right of way.
- amatecha 7mo agoWell, the signs described in the article are only used on the highways, so if they were talking about non-highway driving I guess they may have missed that detail heh
- angry_octet 7mo agoI'm not talking about highways but country roads. The signs cancelling give way to the right are used in many urban and rural locations. But the absence of them doesn't always mean give way to the right -- you might be able to see they have a stop sign, or the smudge of a line indicating a stop sign you can't see. It's incredibly bad design.
- mgaunard 7mo agoReduced to 80km/h since 2018.
- amatecha 7mo agoOh right, I totally forgot! I mean, even then, for so many of those roads I'd never consider driving that fast haha
- dolmen 7mo agoParis' périphérique is nowadays limited to 50 km/h.
- angry_octet 7mo agoPractically people go much faster than 80km/h.
- lefra 7mo agoPeople merging have right of way only on the parisian périphérique. On all other motorways in France, the merging cars must yield. It is common courtesy to move over or match speed so they can merge more easily, but that's not the law.
- imp0cat 7mo agoInterestingly, I believe this manoeuvre (move over to make room for cars entering the highway) is banned in Germany, because it can cause accidents as the cars from the slower right lanes suddenly move to the left lanes.
- ahartmetz 7mo agoThat is not correct - making room is legal and encouraged. You are free to use left lanes for good reasons - being too lazy to switch lanes is the one common not good reason. High speed driving requires looking far ahead to anticipate lane changes of other drivers.
- Akasazh 7mo ago[dead]
- kakacik 7mo agoFor somebody with seemingly so much experience its interesting how incorrect yet confident you are. Maybe less bragging about meaningless numbers (kms driven are much more important) and more fact-checking in the future?
- amatecha 7mo agoI mean, on one trip alone I drove over 7000km. If I said something incorrect, feel free to point it out. Sometimes people don't remember every single detail of every law of a country they don't live in. Maybe less condescending hostility in the future?
- shakow 7mo ago> "people merging in from the right have the right-of-way" actually makes sense to me Yeah but they don't; priority to the right never happens on motorways, all insertions lanes have “Cédez le passage” signs.
- amatecha 7mo agoDo you know of any official government-supplied reference for this information? No worries if not, but I'm trying to find something definitive because I am seeing opposing information all over the place (including on authoritative-sounding travel/tourism sites). I see from checking Google Maps that, indeed, the merging lanes all have a yield sign in them (from the handful I checked). Now I'm wondering "do they have the sign because otherwise the merging vehicle WOULD have the right of way?" or "is this just a friendly reminder of what would legally be the case even if the sign wasn't there?" (edit: I seem to have found the relevant regulations at https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT000006074228/LEGISCTA000006159602/ https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/section_lc/LEGITEXT0000... , article R415-8 seems to cover it)
- eastbound 7mo ago! There is right-hand priority in France! The absence of “Yield” sign means you must let the car from the right go, if they don’t have their own sign, EVEN if they’re from a smaller road (apart from private roads). You were probably victim of a French person using their priority correctly, which is very misleading because you would have been found full-guilty. I call it an “implicit priority to the right” and municipalities use it abundantly to create slow traffic, but foreigners don’t always know that smaller innocent secondary streets can have priority OVER the main road of a village.
- angry_octet 7mo agoOh yes, the local shooting out of a narrow lane often has the legal right to do that. I think that is mad. If you want that behaviour, the the main road should have a stop sign. Particularly in small hamlets, where there is a stone cottage on the corner, there is no visibility of incoming traffic. MOST of the little streets will have a stop/give way, but you can't be sure. It's like playing Russian roulette. Just terrible road design because of an ancient rule from the horse and carriage era.
- eastbound 7mo agoAbsolutely terrible road design. I’m just saying: Yes it is enforced, active, alive and used. Worse: It is inconsistent. My father was rolling out from a neighborhood from the right, hit a car: He didn’t have the right of way because the “cadastre” (the registry of ownership maps) said the land belonged to the neighborhood and therefore was private property. But in MY neighborhood, the neighborhood land belongs to the city and it would have given him priority. I think as a country becomes more international, there are fewer unintuitive rules and more explicit markings required for everyone. That France didn’t change that is a mark of cute traditionalism.