Le Sud de France 5.7: Kafka’s Radar

Over the last 30 years, the number of fatalities on the world’s highways has gone down thanks to safer cars and new technologies. But, when there was a recent uptick in the numbers of road deaths in France, the suave and sleek French Prime Minister, François Fillon came up with a plan he said would help to increase highway safety and solve the budget crisis at the same time, well sort of.

Fillon's traffic proposal is simplicity itself and incredulous to any outside observer. The “plan” consists of putting thousands of additional radar units on the country’s roads and then, taking down all the existing radar warning signs and forbidding the use of radar detectors and GPS radar detectors in vehicles. Fillon is an upper class dandy with a huge ego, which makes him the perfect type to be the head of a tone deaf government. He is France’s answer to that very tan John Boehner, America’s Republican Speaker of the House, and it's just the sort of craziness Boehner would love.

In the looking glass world of Kafka's Radar, Fillon wants to slow down traffic  by removing some of the very things that slow down traffic. In a country where to begin with there's a lack of actual speed limit signs, the best way to describe this plan is that it is one gigantic, extortion scheme, a"sting" operation, aimed at making money off the nation's drivers--good and bad alike.

To support his insane idea, Fillon maintains that the decades long decrease in highway fatalities is due to radar ticketing. In America, where highway deaths have also decreased, sane people point to studies that show that better auto design (crumple zones and air bags), mandatory seat belt use, lower speed limits and public awareness programs, like "Stay Alive, Drive 55", are the reasons for the decrease. 

Robbie the Radar Bandit

France’s radar based highway “safety” system is simply highway robbery carried out by a gang of mechanical bandits that the French populace rightly calls, "le Racket." That's one of the reasons the Prime Minister, pointedly avoids speaking about how very profitable the French radar business is.

What sort of money are we talking about? At just one radar site in the North of France, Robbie the Radar and his pals (who are noted for their errors and malfunctions) produced nearly 170,000 speeding tickets in last year, that’s nearly 500 tickets a day! The fine for these tickets is between $75 and $225 which means that this one location brings in something like 15 million Euros ($21 million) a year—and it’s just one of thousands of radars around the country. Here in the Herault, Robbie's southern brethren earn about $14 million a year. 

I speak about this subject from personal experience, because, I got one of these traffic infractions the other day and it was incomprehensible to me how it related to traffic safety. Tickets are mailed to violators and I got mine a mere three months after the date of the infraction. It said that I was speeding somewhere on the Agde-Marseillan road doing 58 in a 50 zone. 58! Zut alors, that’s a hair raising 35 miles per hour somewhere on a road in the middle of nowhere!

I stared at the ticket and realized I couldn’t even remember where exactly I was three months ago, much less that I was “speeding”at 35. I was defenseless to defend myself. The machines had spoken. It was like something out of Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, where the protagonist, Joseph K, never knows exactly what he is accused of and or how to fight back. 


So like most people I went online to pay the 144 euros ($225 USD) fine. That’s where I saw more proof that the radar system is truly a golden goose. The website is very professional looking and it’s in French, as well as perfect English. Excusez-moi? English?

Goodbye Warning Signs

Looks likes someone was expecting a lot of English speaking speeders to be paying tickets here. The site takes your credit card information and proceeds along without a word about traffic safety and it is all very efficient. It is the only government entity in all of France that is actually efficient.

There is opposition to Fillon. One group against the new law told the press that the effect of Kafka’s radar and its draconian fines, to date, has been to produce an estimated 300,000 drivers on France’s roads without valid licenses or car insurance. Working people can’t afford to pay repeated 144 Euro tickets and often lose their licenses. When people have to drive to work, if you take away their licenses they simply go "under the radar" and drive anyway, making the roads even more unsafe.

The new radar law hasn’t been passed yet and there was an outcry against it by some fifty of Fillon’s fellow UMP ministers who, rightly, fear it will cost them votes in next year’s elections (please see Update at the end of this post). But "Le Racket" exists because it makes too much money and dealing with the real causes, high speeds and alcohol abuse, are both costly and politically risky. 

Speed is the big issue, The legal speed limit on France’s highways is 130 kilometers per hour, that’s 80 miles per hour or 15-25 miles per hour faster than American highways. With a posted speed limit of 80 mph traffic moves a lot faster than that. Cars pass each other at 85-90 mph (150 kph) and the real speeders are often doing a breathtaking 100 mph (160 kph) or more. 


You’d think that someone in the government could make the connection between tiny, little Euro-cars doing a 100 mph and the high death rate?

But talking about lowering the highway speed limit and you feel that you are with a bunch of six year old children. Immediately everyone points to the Germans, who have no highway speed limits on many roads and they say  “Nah, nah, I’m not going to slow down if those German  don’t have to.” Truth is that most German roads have a top speed of 120kph-10kph slower than France.

Just lowering the speed limit to 110 kph (66mph) would save lives.

Speed kills all by itself but  here, as elsewhere, it is aided and abetted by alcohol use. As the economy of France continues to weaken, with more layoffs and factory closings, not surprisingly, there's more alcohol consumed and more high speed auto-suicides. 


Radar speed traps don’t do anything about these problems. After all, a dead drunk speeder won't be paying the 144 Euro ticket they get in the mail two or three months after their demise. Stopping them in the act, you might make a few bucks and save a few lives.

France’s gendarmes, to their credit, work very hard at trying to control drunk driving. On weekends there are hundreds of nighttime traffic checkpoints all around the nation. But police are costly and increasing their numbers in the face of tight national budgets is unlikely. And while you always see State Troopers on America’s highways, which for my money is the best speeding deterrent possible as just their presence slows traffic down, you rarely if ever see a gendarme patrolling a French highway. A real way to reduce highway fatalities would be to have more cops to stop speeders before they kill themselves and others.


There is still some small hope that sanity will prevail and this law won’t be passed. But both Fillon and his boss, President Sarkozy, are adamant that it will. They are snarly men who appear to shut out things they don't want to hear, like any opposition. Fillon has gone a little crazy and begun spouting things like “traffic safety is a sacred trust,” "we will stand firm, "and “there can be no debate.” He has personalized the issue to the point that it has become a simple case of "I am right and everyone else is wrong."

 Bon chance France!


Update May 25: The headlines of this morning's newspapers screamed, "Victory over the Government." This is bizarre because it was actually 80 ministers of the government ruling UMP (many from the Sud de France) as well as the Minister of the Interior who came together and shut down M. Fillon's folly. Radar warning signs will remain up and/or replaced by hundreds of "teaching" signs. Teaching signs are those radar devices that indicate your speed and flash SLOW DOWN if you are over the speed limit. 


It doesn't solve any of the real problems of traffic safety but it least it is a step away from an automated totalitarian state and one that at least addresses real world situations.