French drivers are taking desperate measures to avoid disqualification, as the authorities add another 500 automatic radar devices to check their speed, in an effort to stem the rising number of fatalities on French roads.

 

Road deaths in France reached just over 5,300 last year, including the seriously injured who died within 30 days of an accident. The French Environment Minister, Jean-Louis Boorloo, has announced plans to increase the number of radar devices to 2,000 by the end of the year. He can count on the president’s support, because in 2003 Sarkozy himself, when Interior Minister, brought in 1,000 speed cameras. Although some way short of Britain’s 3,200 cameras, the French equivalent did their job effectively, catching 4.2 million motorists, more than twice as many as prosecuted in the UK.

 

The burgeoning number of disqualifications – up from 70,000 in 2006 compared with 21,000 three years previously – means that guilty French drivers are compelled to take another driving test at the end of their suspension. This has led to friends or relatives of drivers, so long as they have a clean license, distorting the penalty by lending their own names, admitting their guilt, and protecting the licenses of those perilously close to disqualification. Every speed penalty costs a driver two points; six offences should put him or her off the road.