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. 

Le Sud de France 4.9: A Passion For Pézenas

We are moved again, this time into our own house. As we settle in we decide that since the weather has finally cleared, we'd take a stroll through town and get a better feel for its streets and neighborhoods.

 

Pézenas is best known for its Renaissance mansions and palaces. The town boasts that the playwright Moliere, who wrote comedies and farces-very fitting for Pézenas--often brought his troupe here to perform and enjoy the city. 

The town’s name probably comes from the Latin for fishpond but the town’s exact origin is lost in Roman times or earlier. But the role it’s played in history is not lost. It was an open city, tolerant of different beliefs and lifestyles.  Like other parts of the Languedoc it was a city in which Roman Catholics, Cathar Catholics and Jews all lived together as one community. 
Then in the early 13^th century the city was conquered by the French army from the North and the Cathars were wiped out. 

Walking through the old streets we passed an archway bearing the sign “Le Ghetto” which means that this was the Jewish quarter.  It reminded me that several meters below our feet there exists a centuries old system of tunnels that run from the houses to the fields outside the town. One recently discovered tunnel entrance starts a building which was used for Jewish ritual baths. These tunnels were used during WWII by the French Resistance. 

Naturally any place that supports freedom of thought requires escape routes to evade whomever the current forces of intolerance are. And there’s always some variety of the thought police ready to clamp down on people for just trying to live their lives.

photos c 2011 steve meltzer photographe

Walking through Pezenas, I found myself taking pride in living in a place where freedom was so highly valued and its one of the reasons I have a passion for the place.

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Sud de France 3.9: Sex At The Vide Grenier

An old poster for an island vacation

Barbie and Ken lay there naked in the hot, French afternoon sun. Another Ken and Barbie, more modestly dressed in shorts, lay beneath them. It was a classic “mise en scene” orgy and it would have been a bizarre except that it is a common sight at French "Vide Greniers". Translated as an “empty attic” sale it like a garage sale on steroids. 

A vide grenier  fills a village for blocks

Vide Greniers are popular throughout France and it seems that there are one or two every weekend in different villages throughout the Herault. Although similar to an American garage sale there is one big difference, a grenier sale involves an enter village and naturally when dozens of people empty out their attics you get a pretty surprising glimpse into their private lives.

One thing that is constant with these greniers is that there are lots and lots of dolls for sale. I guess French women, more than their American sisters, hang onto their doll collections well into adulthood. Occasionally the dolls are neatly sorted, labeled and wrapped, but most of the time they are simply piled on top of each other; inadvertently creating scenes of wild sex and odd juxtaposition.

A wide range of tastes here for certain

It is ironic of course because a vide grenier sale is usually put on by the local PTA or a church group as a village fundraiser. The moms sell snacks and sandwiches at the local “Salle des Fetes” (community center) while the dads direct traffic and parking.Yet for all this wholesomeness just a few minutes into a grenier you begin to notice the odd stuff.  

Lawrence and Florence of Arabia I suppose

Usually a grenier will fill an entire village center with tables as far as the eye can see down every street. There are piles high with stacks of old books, mountains of old clothes, boxes of old vinyl records, CDs and DVDs, old car parts, cartons of electrical wiring bits, used kitchenware, big wooden boards of pin and badge collections as well as display cases of coins.

A Barbie anyone?

But there’s no order to the grenier. No one seems to feel the need to put clothing sellers in one area and record sellers in another. It would probably be too hard anyway as each seller’s table is a hodgepodge of stuff with lots of different kinds of things to sell.It is like stepping into the largest open air junk shop imaginable enhanced with wine and baguettes. 

The noir side of Noir.

So there I am at a grenier on the lookout for the provocative stuff, the subtle stuff that goes beyond the piles of sexy lingerie. That doesn’t interest me, actually I’m a little put off at the thought of buying someone’s used risqué undies for the one I love. 

As you can see from the photos my search went pretty well. 

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.5: The Storms of October

The Tramontane has been roaring out of the North now for three days. It’s a cold dry wind that comes down out of the Atlantic and squeezes through the Pyrenees and over Massif Central into the Languedoc. Historically it’s known to last for days. 

A tree uprooted by the Tramontane

The Tramontane gusts often to about 30-40 mph (70 kpm) like a tropical storm but not too many trees are toppled and there isn’t a lot of building damage. But it’s the days of this wind’s roaring sound that can drive you crazy.

In the Herault the Tramontane is one of the three winds that scour the region. The other two are the Mistral and the Sirocco, known locally as the Marin. The Mistral comes out of the Northwest, rolls down the Rhone Valley against the Massif Central and mainly affects Provence and the Camargue. The Marin comes out of the Southwest--it begins in North Africa—and arrives warm and wet having picked up its moisture as it crosses the Mediterranean. 



Locals know that the Marin is followed by warmer, rainy days and the Tramontane by clear sparkling colder ones.

This year, the Tramontane is clearly on the on the side of the French anti-reform protesters. Last week the garbage collectors joined the strikers and in cities across France garbage has piled up. In most places though, the garbage had been neatly stacked around neighborhood collection points and maintaining the civic order. The French are very tidy about their garbage. They neatly sort and package their garbage, separating and setting aside recycling and separately wrapping compostable matter. 

Our garbage neatly sorted and packaged

But then like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum the Tramontane blew in from out of the North and began scattering the refuse all about. The windblown garbage is unsettling to everyone’s sense of order as well as to their noses.

But despite the scattered garbage piles, persistent gas shortages, post office and railway slow downs, most people still support the anti-reformists.

And there’s a strange kind twist to the story. 

Garbage that makes a pretty good photo

 In conversation with people and on TV folks are saying that Sarkozy was elected because he was tougher than the other candidates and they felt he would get needed reforms passed. They didn’t like him but his opponent Ségolène Royal, a woman AND a socialist couldn’t be expected to fix things—she was just too nice and caring.

Sarko is short and brusque and unpleasant. He snarls rather than speaks and doesn’t seem to like ordinary people very much. What I think happened is that the French expected Sarko would move reforms along but in a decidedly French way. That is there would be a lot of zuts alors! and merde! and posturing followed by lots of small compromises and face saving gestures along the way to reform. What they didn’t take into account is his intransience and unwillingness to even talk to the other side. Sarko is in his style, very much a European version of a TEA party-er.  

Organizing for the October 28th demonstrations

In the US, President Obama was elected to take over a government driven to the economic brink by the former administration. Tough steps were needed and everyone thought that this professorial guy would be just the one to do it. But Americans like Obama because he is nice. He has a great smile that shines across his face and can light up a room. People would say how tired they were of the squabbling in Washington and wanted a conciliatory “now kids I want you all to shake hands and clean up your room” kind of leader.

The French went with a thug to do the tough job and hoped that he would clean up the neighborhood without breaking too many windows.The Americans wanted a nice guy who wouldn't lose his temper and break the dishes. No one seems happy with what they got.

I think that the right, groups like the TEA party, would love a guy like Sarko. He’s nasty and blunt like a street fighter and always on the edge of anger. He has hissy fits in public and often seems uncomfortable and near the breaking point.

But unlike TEA party hopefuls he’s already IN power. 

That’s the scary part. He is in power but not in control and it pisses him off. For Sarko the unions and strikers don’t have a different idea of how things should be done. For him they are “scum” and “dangerous” and almost traitors.

For now the French government claims that everything is calming down. But tomorrow the 28^th is another day of national strikes. Although the government has adopted a “move along folks there’s nothing to see here” attitude, people do see the strikes every day. You can’t avoid the closed gas stations, the cancelled flights and the students sitting in front of schools.

And most of all you can’t avoid the garbage.
The garbage my friends that’s blowing in the wind. 

The garbage gauntlet

Photos and text ©2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.1: Operation Escargot

Today is the big national strike against Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to “reform” France’s retirement laws. What is most striking about the strike is that it illustrates just how different the French are from Americans.

The backbone of the strike, which in French is called a “grève,” is made up of the teamster unions who through a deliberate slowdown called “Opération escargot” they’ve disrupted gasoline supplies around the country. Their activities focused too on closing refineries and blocking jet fuel to the nation’s airports. It’s caused the cancellation of 30-50% of the Air France’s flights. Gasoline for autos has been less hard hit, so far, because France is dipping into its national reserves to make up for the shortages. Here in the Herault some stations have signs up saying that they are out of gasoline. 

Rupture means broken up or simply 'no gas.'

But here’s what points out the difference between our two countries. The truck drivers aren’t affected by the reforms. They can retire at 55 because of a special law exempting them from the retirement rules. They have no ‘skin in the game.’ They could sit out this one out.

So why are they participating? One simple answer is that the French have grèves the way Americans have tailgate parties; there’s usually one every couple of weeks. It’s in their blood and the unions support each other. That’s called solidarity. Also France has the lowest poverty rate in the EU, (12%) and there is concern that the “reform” will impoverish some people. The strikers seem to have the idea that it a nation’s responsibility to take care of its people and help keep them out of poverty. Something unheard of in the US or at least that hasn’t been heard since LBJ’s “War on Poverty.” 

But there’s yet another reason for the strikes that should sound awfully familiar to Americans and doesn’t get much play in the foreign media. There’s a tax, like our estate tax, that affects only the very wealthiest in France. Sarkozy wants to eliminate it even though it brings in billions of Euros each year. Ending it means that Sarko needs to cut government spending to keep the deficit under control. And what sort of cuts do you think he’s come up with? He’s “reforming” the retirement system to make up for the lost revenue from taxes on the rich.

Agree or disagree with the need for reform at least the French aren’t taking this kind of chicanery sitting down. They’ve kept the issue alive and personal by mobilizing the nation. Over 71% of the people support the strikes despite the gas lines and shortages. 

The graffiti reads, "When the state violates your rights, insurrection is your sacred right."

Here in France they still believe that you have go out into the streets and fight for your rights. We used to do that in the USA but it’s a lesson we seem to have forgotten.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 2.7: The first big lesson. Going with the bureaucracy.

Madame R. is our immigration officer, the person helping us with the paperwork to get our identity papers. In France you need to carry identity papers as the police can ask for them at any time. But it’s hardly a police state. You can live here all your life and not be asked for papers except when you apply for a driver’s license, rent a place etc. It’s also true if you are outside of a big city you’ll rarely even see the police.

It's a cold morning when we set out and the rain is pelting the city when we arrive at the at the immigration office. We go into a tiny waiting room with a couple of chairs and a half filled water cooler and wait until Madame comes to get us. She greets us with a big smile and a cheery “Bon Jour.” 

Unlike the existentially weary Kafka-esque bureaucrats one sees in the movies, Madame R. is a rather energetic woman with twinkling brown eyes and a pile of dark hair on her head. She’s wearing a colorful scarf around her neck and has a very fashionable short leather jacket hung over her chair. She escorts us into her office and we begin to learn our first really big lesson in working the bureaucracy. 

The French legal system gives new meaning to the word byzantine. It is a madman’s labyrinth of two thousand years of laws that have been added atop each other with few ever being removed. The rules are so many and so contradictory that no one really seems to know how to follow them. That means that the official you are dealing with, is trying to figure out what the rules are as much as trying to solve your problem. 

Madame R. doesn't get many Americans needing papers so she is quite tickled that we have come for her help. It is I guess 'fraternie avec les etat-unis" but with little experience with our kind of request Madame has to resort to a shelf of thick black tomes. Sifting through them, she pulls one out and begins reading to herself. 

This book is not a French law book so much as a cookbook full of regulations and procedures laid out as recipes for dealing with all sorts of situations. This cookbook approach gives a bureaucrat a lot of freedom within a strict set of instructions. If they make a good faith attempt to follow the rules they can do whatever they want. The goal is to produce a beautiful “dossier” that can be filed away and forgotten.  

When Madame R. finds the recipe for us she begins to go through the check list of steps. She’s clearly taking her time deciding which ones she thinks are worthwhile and which ones are not. 

Finally she says is that we will need three passport size photos of each of us. Well, no sooner said than done. I had taken passport shots of us and made about twenty tiny prints of each. We are down to the last ten. I hand the six little pictures to Madame R. who is pleased with our preparedness. Diane takes other papers out of her official looking, leather file case and offers them to Madame. But she Madame simply smiles at each offered paper and says something to the effect of, “don’t worry my dears, you are in my capable hands and you won't need that or that or that."

Yes, she is going to get us our identity cards and she's happy to do it.

That’s the big lesson. Every French official you encounter whether a train conductor, a Mayor or a bureaucrat like Madame R. needs to be approached in a certain manner because each can simply make something happen or not.

And the best way to get what you need is by following these three simple steps:

1  Establish that you are helpless and foolish. As in “We were supposed to go to the police but we tried and couldn’t find them.”

2.Ask them what they would do in your shoes. “What would you do in our place? The Mayor sent us to you. What are we to do next?”

3 Next just shut up and just let them work out the solution. 

Madame R. has reduced the whole identity paper process to a few minutes of paper signing and sends us off to get a couple pages of financial information translated for our dossier.

Leaving her office with us she steps outside, gives us a big smile and looking up says, “The sky is beginning to clear. It will be a fine day.”

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer