French plan new laws to cut number of deaths on roads

As tens of thousands of British motorists prepare to risk the annual August death toll on the roads of France, Paris is considering tough laws to reduce the country's calamitous number of motoring deaths.

The measures, to be offered for national debate in September, will include zero alcohol tolerance for drivers, a new traffic police force and "black boxes" in cars.

Road safety pressure groups have welcomed the ideas but point out that the number of French road deaths – 8,000 a year, compared to 3,500 in Britain – has a simple explanation and a simple solution. The police and the government should enforce the existing laws on speeding, drink-driving, red lights, pedestrian crossings, seat-belts, safety distances and overtaking on the inside. At present, these laws are widely ignored and the police and gendarmerie, despite claims to the contrary, do little to enforce them.

President Jacques Chirac and the new Transport Minister, Gilles de Robien, have promised all that is going to change. But after years of unfulfilled promises, road safety groups are suspicious that, once again, there will be little serious action.

Mr Chirac has made road safety one of the three pet subjects of his second term. He told television viewers last week that he was "absolutely horrified that French roads are the most dangerous in Europe". In fact, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg, Spain and Belgium are worse in terms of deaths per 1,000 people, but France is responsible for one in five of all road deaths in the European Union.

Critics said it was fatuous for Mr Chirac, after seven years in the presidency and 35 years in public life, to claim to be shocked by the death toll on roads. If he was so concerned, they asked, why did he go ahead this month with the traditional, post-election amnesty for minor motoring offences?

As a first step towards ending the slaughter (an average of 160 road deaths a week), Mr de Robien has pledged that police surveillance of roads will be stepped up this summer and all rule-breaking will be ruthlessly punished.

The previous transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, made the same threats but they came to nothing. It emerged that the guidelines for enforcing speed laws involved stopping drivers only if they were 30kph (18mph) over the limit. In other words, motorists could drive at 160kph (100mph) on motorways and 120 kph on country roads without fear of a ticket. Even those few drivers who are charged have almost a one in two chance of escaping without penalty. Road safety campaigners have calculated that 45 per cent of speeding charges are dropped because of string-pulling by motorists.

Similarly, police (in the towns) and gendarmerie (in the rural areas) seldom enforce the drink-driving laws late at night or at the weekends, when the rules are most often flouted. The power of the unions within the police means most officers are deployed when it suits them, during "office hours".

Claude Got, a professor of anatomy and pathology, and a tireless road safety campaigner, says the enforcement of road laws is "worthy of a banana republic". "People know it and they behave accordingly," he said. "Speeding is now a question of mass disobedience. It has become banal in the extreme. There is nothing complicated [about road safety]. You have to create conditions in which people know punishment is automatic."

The Transport Minister has suggested France should have its own, separate traffic police force or highway patrol. He has talked about, and then stepped away from, the idea of a black-box recorder in cars and instant fines for motorists who average more than 130kph between motorway toll booths.

He has floated the idea of a zero rate of alcohol for drivers but said this might apply only to people in the first years after they get their licence.

Road safety groups remain suspicious. The Fondation Anne Cellier, which campaigns for respect for existing laws, complained that "for 30 years the political will [to cut road deaths] has gone into reverse, faced with the lobby of the car industry and the unpopularity which enforcement brings".

The European Transport Safety Council said it welcomed the ideas but hoped Paris would now change its policy of weakening EU-wide car safety laws to protect its car industry.