Le Sud de France 6.3 : The Dance of the Vignerons Part 2- All’s Well That Ends

Early Sunday morning and I have not slept for two days. In some corner of my mind, I'm aware of a distant rumbling that sounds like an army with pipe and drum has invaded the village. I roused myself, put on clothes and went downstairs to see what was going on. Opening the door, I stepped outside and a cloud of white enveloped in me. Through its haze, I could make out crazed figures in red and one that was throwing a bucket of water at me. I tried to avoid the wave, but it was too late, I was left soaked and covered in a wet flour paste.

Welcome to «le tour de ville» a Tourbes village tradition. It’s a group of guys who spend fête Sunday covering themselves and every square millimeter of our pristine town with flour and water while downing lots of beer. Having been thus baptized by the boys, I grabbed my camera and ran off to join the merry making.

Le tour had thoughtfully brought along tractor pulling a decorated flatbed. On it was a bench, cases of beer and an inflatable pool full of cold water. Frolicking through the town, le tour would scoop up surprised villagers and dump them into the pool. When their hapless victim stood up to get out of the water, they were pummeled with flour.

Le tour took many beer breaks that featured wild dancing, and the singing of odd, wordless songs. As they marched along to drum and pipe they left streets shrouded in floury clouds that rose in the air like the smoke from some urban battleground. To my astonishment, villagers whose cars and homes were being “floured,” hung out of their windows laughing and urging le tour on.

Finally, still a bit hung over, I gave up the chase and went home, where Scaramouche our cat, greeted me at the door. He has been seriously unhappy about the fête and its nightly disco bombardment. The thumping basses and screaming singers had driven him into our windowless downstairs bathroom for shelter. Head aching, I felt like joining him there.

Sunday night came when we got to the café, we found the boys of le tour recovering from a hard day of village flouring, by drinking more beer. Some slouched on the bar, a few stood straight up, dead asleep, and a few muddled on, the piper playing random notes, the drummers listlessly banging their drums. Around the quai were glistening trails of slimy wet flour, as though a herd of giant prehistoric snails had passed this way.

Tonight’s band was a “jazz” band but as soon as the show began, I knew their “jazz” was just more disco. The audience was sparse. Earlier, the quai had been full of Loto players but after the games they had drifted away and only few stayed for the show.

The disco was loud and it would have been just another night of soulless warbling and robotic dancing, had it not been for the Michael Jackson imitator. 

He came on stage dressed like the 1982 Jackson and sang “Billie Jean.” Through the whole song he held his hat in front of his face and he sang without moving. There were no dancers, no Jackson steps, no moon-walking; he just stood there immobile and flatly sang the lyrics.

I knew then that we had hit bottom. 

The show ended at two, there was only one day left.

Monday morning and the end was in sight. The day began as usual, with workers hosing down the streets while the Mayor and Comité cleaned the toilets. Three nights of bands, booze and disrupted sleep had taken its toll. Everyone was walking in a daze, punch drunk and exhausted.

That night, the quai filled, not with visitors, but with townspeople. I concluded that we must have just worn out everyone else in the Herault.

Tonight there would be a lone DJ but I feared it would still turn into another night of disco. But, when the DJ arrived, I knew something was up because he didn’t have a truckload of gear like the others, just a few amps, a mixing board, and some speakers. A lone teenager, helped him set up and then he hunkered down behind the mixing board. Flanked on either side by low banks of black speakers, he stretched across the board checking the sound levels, his fingers racing over the sliders like manic spiders. In the darkness, his face dimly lit by the board’s lights, he looked like a medieval alchemist hovering over vials of bubbling liquids.

The show began and instead of bone rattling, mind-numbing disco, the DJ played a quiet, elegant “corrida,” one of those songs from the bullfights. As it started, some of the older villagers, mostly vignerons, stood up and began making their way to the front of the stage. They escorted their ladies to the dance floor, where they gently wrapped their arms around them and began to glide across the pavement with long stately strides.

Unlike the previous nights, these dancers danced dances of intricate steps and patterns; dances they had learned in their youth. When the corrida ended, the DJ played a foxtrot, then a few tangos and rumbas. Throughout the night, he kept tight control of the music, changing the tempo, altering the mood, weaving spells around the dancers. With his simple light system, he created scampering spots of colors that played across the dancing vignerons.

I was standing to one side of the stage taking pictures, when, I was suddenly pulled into the dance by our beautiful postmistress. She startled me but I quickly fell in step with her. We danced for a few moments and then changed partners. I danced with my wife, Diane, and then with the vignerons’ wives, and then some ados. I danced nonstop, until I finally had to rest.

Tired beyond tired, I thought of those long, dead Romans. Though no one in the village would call this fête a bacchanalia, I’d bet the Romans would have recognized it in spite of the lack of wild dancing and sex.

Beneath it all, this midsummer’s celebration had all the elements of a primeval ritual. Days of dancing, nights without sleep, the consumption of quantities of wine, the morning washing of streets, village leaders cleaning toilets and le tour de ville, like some drunked shamans, interceding with the gods on behalf of the village and purifying it with water and flour. Even the showgirls played a role, as pagan priestesses.

I stood there by the dance floor, thinking these thoughts, wondering if I had gone insane or if I was just plain, stupid drunk.

But, it felt right. Our village of 1700 dog-tired souls was dancing on the very same spot where the Romans had danced two thousand years before. Here, far from Rome, those veterans of Caesars’ Legions celebrated their harvest and worshipped Bacchus, our village was just carrying on that rite.

We are small village yet we an amazing cross section of humanity is here. We are the children of Cathar and Castile, of Albion and Africa, of Australia and the Americas, and our vigneron t-shirts are proudly emblazoned with the words, "we are les enfants de Bacchus,” the children of Bacchus.

Amidst vineyards, heavy with grapes, fragile and imperfect as we are, we shake our booties in the face of life’s madness. The fête, the bacchanalia, is how we reaffirm that we humans are one tough bunch of bastards and together we can get through anything.

We drank our vignerons’ wine, danced madly for days and I think, I hope, we made old Bacchus howl with delight and get up and dance too. 


Yeah, you put your left foot in you take your left foot out. That’s what this was all about.

Finally, it all had to end. The DJ played the last song of the night, couples embraced. High over our heads, the first shooting stars of the Perseids began to fall, like silver melting in the night sky. I took Diane’s hand and we stepped out onto the asphalt dance floor. We swayed to the music and there, in front of our house, we danced the dance of the vignerons.

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Le Sud de France 6.1: Hot Time, Summer in the Herault

They’re here!!!

A family heading to the beach.

Summer and the autoroutes of the Herault are teeming with the rattled masses of Europe yearning to get warm. There are daily reports of hundred kilometer long traffic jams as the population of the EU melts southward to the Mediterranean beaches. The Herault is overflowing with tourists-- up 6% over last year report the tourism people. Sadly, restaurants and local businesses say that despite that sales are down 30-50%. While more people are heading to the Herault, they have less money to spend because of the lingering economic crisis. Many tourists even come with their own food and stay in their camper vans at public campsites near the beach to cut their costs. It's a shame if they just stay at the beaches because there is lot to see and do in the Herault and much of it is inexpensive or free.  

The Butte de Leves near the village of Faugeres

The Herault has one of the most remarkable and varied natural environments imaginable. About the size of the American state of Delaware, it has an interior landscape of thousands of square kilometers of vineyards and long, straight rows of vines, framed by rugged mountains to the north and long, sandy, beaches on the Mediterranean to in the south.

The village of Roquebrun sits above the Orb

The Haut-Languedoc Natural Park, in the north of the Herault, is a large mountainous (the “Monts de Espinouse”) area that is a favorite of campers and hikers. It is an expanse of mountain lakes and forests, trails and camping sites, comparable to American national parks like Washington’s Cascades Mountains. One of the many entrance points for visitors to the park is the small village of Roquebrun, a lovely collection of stones houses perched above the Orb River. Down river from Roquebrun, the Orb narrows and becomes a series of rapids that are a favorite challenge for kayakers from all over Europe.

The Cirque de Moureze

The Cirque de Moureze with landscape of strange dolomite rock formations is another natural wonder of the Park. There are a number of hiking trails through the Cirque that range from an easy hour’s walk to a hard, ten-hour trek. Best of all the Cirque is only a few minutes from the bustling town of Clermont l’Herault. Further north, towards the eastern side of the Herault, is the Tarn River Gorge, a spectacular series of canyons and cliffs carved by the river as it flows south to the Mediterranean. The only cost to a visit to these natural wonders is the price of gas.

In the southern Herault is the Herault is the Bassin du Thau, a huge saltwater lake that it is the heart of the area’s mussel and oyster farming industry. The Bassin lies on the Med and has a ten kilometer long sandbar of beaches along its seaside. Unfortunately, by early summer, the sandbar is packed with the camper vans and huge RVs of the European middle class. The line up of hundreds of TV satellite dishes next to the camper vans makes the sandbar look like Cape Canaveral before a shuttle launch.

a dolomite formation

The mussel and oyster farms of the Bassin du Thau

At the western end of the Bassin is Le Cap d’Agde, a resort town that looks a lot like South Beach. As the locals tell it, if you want to experience a good old fashion Roman orgy, nothing matches the antics of the folks of Le Cap d’Agde. From private clubs to “naturalist” beaches it is a playground for the suburban European working class looking for a very good time.

And speaking of the Romans, they settled here over a thousand years ago and left their mark all over the Herault. They introduced wine and olive cultivation to the region and built bridges, roads and villas, much of which survives today. Near the village of St.Thibery, for instance, there is a lovely old Roman bridge spanning the Herault River and further south near the village of Loupian there is a preserved Gallo-Roman villa.

Sand fills the Orb river at Valras-Plage after a storm, turning it yellow.

The Jardin St.Adrien near the town of Servian

Another beach town, one of our favorites, is a far calmer place than Le Cap d’Agde. Valras-Plage is an old-fashioned seaside town with a long sandy beach and a beachside “boardwalk” lined with cafés, restaurants, and beach clothing shops.

The actor Gilles Buonomo performing

Another surprisingly big part of life in the Herault is art and culture. With a total population of less than a million people, it is a surprise that so much music, theatre, and art can be supported here. Montpellier is the capital of the Herault and it is considered by many France’s “third City” after Marseille and Paris. Each year it has a ballet festival, classical music performances, and art exhibitions. The city’s municipal museum is currently showing the photographs of Brassai, one of my personal icons.

About 25 kilometers southwest of Montpellier is another seaside town, one I’ve already written about, called Sète. In July, the town goes water jousting mad as rower powered boats race towards each other carrying jousters with lances, who try to knock each other into the water. For a more serene activity, the museum in Sète is showing the works of Joan Miro this summer, should you need a break from the sportive types.

Calderoni sings in Pezenas

I’ve  written about Pézenas, the town we live next door to in pieces like “A Passion for Pézenas” and “Searching for the Moon and Molière.” It is a small town with only about 8500 inhabitants and yet its arts and cultural programs are extraordinary. The town has a small, elegant Molière museum, the Museum de Vulliod-Saint-Germain, which is an old mansion that was donated to the town by its wealthy owners. It has a wonderful performance space with superb acoustics for concerts. In the last few weeks, we attended two concerts there. One was an “a capella” performance of lyric opera songs by an extraordinary soprano named Kamala Calderoni, who I may add is originally from San Francisco, and a second a concert of violin and cello duets by a couple of Irish musicians, The Duo Chagall.

A fete du vin 

Summer activates in Herault aren’t just these events but include hundreds of small village fêtes. For example in our little village of only  1500 people we have had  since June 1^st ; a “fête du vin,” a poetry and theater fête, a music fête, three wine tastings at the caveau (the wine co-op), a motorcycle and old American car rally, a regional judo championship, a monster car and truck show, a three day village fête (including dinner for the entire village on our street) and an event that involved children pushing young bulls into plastic swimming pools (please, do not ask.)

at the poetry fete

After all of this the village takes a small break and resumes it activity in September with the 3^rd Annual “running of the bulls” through the ancient, narrow streets of our tiny village. It is an event you cannot miss because the  bulls run right past your front door.

A little scary yes, but hey, it’s all part of summer in the Herault. 

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Le Sud de France 6.0: And then the Indian Cried.

Maurice, a driver of long haul, refrigerator trucks, was sitting across from me at dinner when he began to tap his fork against his wine glass to get everyone’s attention. Standing up he announced, “Yesterday was my last day of work. As of today I am retired.”

Amidst smiles and laughter, all of us around the long, outdoor table raised our glasses and said, “à votre santé!” When he sat down, I leaned over and asked him, “Maurice, what are you going to do now that you are retired?”

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Make love.”

My jaw dropped and he looked at me quizzically. Pointing to his crotch he added, “Well, why not, it still works?” Then he hugged his wife who smiled shyly.

Welcome to the South of France, to the Looking Glass world, where, as the comedy group, the Firesign Theater, used to say, “everything you think you know is wrong.”

Retirement for Americans is all about moving from one area of accomplishment and competition to another. Things like playing golf, visiting the grandkids, building a second home or travel become the new goals. Making love? Not so much.

a happy guy

Yet, this is what is at the heart of our experience of moving to France. We are learning to see the world anew and we are discovering that it is possible to be happy.

Happy. What a strange word that is? We didn’t move here to be happy. As adults, we had more rational reasons; things like the cost of living, the quality of the food and the temperate climate. How could we have even told friends and family that we were leaving the United States to be "happy" when we ourselves were unaware of what "happy" is.

Sitting under the evening Midi sky, the breezes from the Med rapidly cooling off the day’s heat, sipping wine and listening to Maurice tell jokes about Andorra and Belgium--that I only half understood--for this small moment all the frustrations and trials of moving and resettling didn’t matter. I was just happy.

Proust wrote « N’allez pas trop vite. » (“don’t go too fast.”) What I think he meant, was that we need to take pleasure in our lives in the moment and not to go so fast to the next thing, that we end up not actually living our lives. That is what we’ve begun to do here. We’ve slowed down and are tasting happy.

Ironically though, in Proustian terms, we've done it, in part, by falling in with a very fast crowd.

in the Looking Glass World

I’m talking about bikers, “Les Motos d’Espoir” or Motorcycles for Hope. An association of motorcycle riders who raise money for kids with special needs. In June, they had a big gathering and some friends invited us to join them there.

Arriving at the rally we once again stepped through the Looking Glass. Suddenly, it was as though we were back in the US of A. 
There were American and Confederate flags all over, bandana wearing bikers in Harley-Davidson jackets and tunes like “Oh Diana” and “Folsom Prison Blues” booming over the sound system.

However, we were still in France, the bikers here drank tea and espresso, and had brought along their extremely cute kids--the girls dressed in frilly sundresses, the boys in half shorts--who ran around the grounds laughing and giggling. A very sweet version of biker life.

There was a distinct lack of big beer bellies  and, oddly enough, a lack of actual “chopped’ Harleys. “They are too expensive and too noisy for France,” one biker told me.

Motorcycles clubs are an hommage to American culture rather than an anti-establishment movement. This is a lifestyle of “l’amité” centered around a deep love for all things American. Whenever I hear a French person sing an old Elvis song or a long forgotten Broadway show tune, it makes me think that the French may cherish American culture more we Americans do.

Towards late afternoon, several motorcyclists lined up to give spectators rides around the village on their bikes. One of the kids who they were raising funds for was lifted up onto the back seat of a big three wheeler. It was driven by a guy with long hair, lots of tattoos and a German WWII style helmet. When the boy was secure on the bike, the guy turned around and gave him a big "high five". The boy "high five'd" back and I was quick enough to get a photo of the two of them smiling at the gesture.

Now let me fast-forward ahead about two weeks. I’m sitting at our village café with some of the Motos when who drives up but the longhaired guy. Except today he is in full American Indian regalia. We are introduced to each other and start to talk.

l'indien

His name is Jerry but everyone calls him, “l’indien” --the Indian--a nickname he got because he had lived for six years in a teepee, high in the Ardèche mountains, raising horses and living simply off the land like a North American Plains Indian. French TV did a documentary about l’indien and it made him famous, but it didn’t change him. He still wears his handmade Indian clothing; Cheyenne necklaces and bracelets, a loose deer skin leather shirt and a bison horned, fur covered motorcycle helmet.

It is the Looking Glass world again.

Here I am in a tiny French village, wearing my black cowboy hat and drinking Marseilles pastis with a guy --from Belgium--dressed like a Cheyenne Indian, surrounded by leather jacketed motorcyclists. It is a surreal moment, like something out of a Fellini movie or perhaps, an acid trip, yet the whole scene is infused with that odd glow of “happy.”

We live close to the café and after awhile, I excused myself and went home to get an 8x10 print I had made of the “high five” moment. Returning to the café I gave it to l’indien. ‘Pour vous. Avec plaisir” I said. He smiled, and looked at the print of himself and the little boy.

I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, I saw him wiping his eyes. My photo had touched his big heart. The Indian had cried and then, I cried too.

Happy tears I think.

Happy tears.






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Le Sud de France 5.9: Searching for The Moon and Molière.

Martine

Wednesday night, after sundown, with tripod on shoulder, we set out to “chercher la lune.” Tonight there was to be a spectacular  total eclipse of the moon and I hoped to get pictures of it. However as we crossed the village square, we ran into a bunch of our friends who were sitting outside the village café finishing their dinners. After ten minutes of kiss-kiss-kiss and many “bon soir,” I explained our mission to them. 


Immediately, several  looked up into the sky to find the moon. As locals, they felt certain they could show us, we Americans, where their moon was on this special night. But there was no moon to be seen. Everyone looked and looked, and then pondered this mystery. A small boy was even sent off to see if perhaps the moon was hiding behind a building or tree. But he found no moon either, anywhere.


A great deal of conversation followed this strangeness as it was not like the moon to disappear like this on important nights. Our discussion lasted late into the night and despite the talk, there still was no moon to be seen. It turned out, we were told later, that the moon was low in the sky and visible only from the vineyards beyond town.  


Setting out to find the moon and ending up  discussing its loss instead, is the kind of  redirection of intent that often happens in Molière's plays. Which made it a fitting way to end a week of music and theater productions that made up the Molière Festival in Pézenas. 

I hadn’t read much Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) before we got to France and I hadn’t understood his importance as one of the major figures in French literature and theater.

the Place Gambetta

We live near the town of Pezenas in the Herault and it just so happened that in the middle of the 17^th century, Molière and his touring company, l’Illustre Théâtre, stayed in here, under the protection and support of the Prince of Conti--Louis XIV’s governor of the Languedoc. Molière famously spent his time performing his works and seducing the noble ladies of the region.

A couple of hundred years later, Pézenas realized the treasure it had in that visit and today the town has a Hôtel Molière, a Brasserie Molière, a Restaurant Molière, the Caveau Molière (with its Vins Molière) and the Molière Festival.

Martine and Sganarelle

That would be a lot of Molière, perhaps too much, if not for the fact that he is a great, funny playwright and his plays are wild combinations of broad slapstick comedy--with real slapsticks--and very complex language. His goal was to undermine received wisdom and opinion and poke fun at the pompous. His plays have aged well and I think still resonate today as powerfully as when he wrote them.

The photos with this post are from Molière’s “The Doctor in Spite of Himself” (le médecin malgré lui) as performed by the maniacs of the Théâtre de l’éventail (the theater of the hand fan) of Orleans. The performance was held outdoors in the Place Gambetta in the heart of Pézenas' historic district of Renaissance era buildings.

looking for a doctor

The play starts with the protagonist, Sganarelle beating his wife Martine, with a slapstick. Two men accost him and berate him for this, but then things are soon stood on their head when Martine objects to the men's presence and tells them to mind their own business. She says that she just might enjoy a beating every once in a while and who are they  to interfere?

Then it turns out that the men are on a mission to find a doctor for a  rich man who will pay well for one’s services. Martine, seeing a chance to make some money tells them that Sganarelle is a doctor. Sganarelle is the cunning, over-the-top country wiseass, who ultimately gets the best of all the other characters, and it was role Molière always took on for himself.

Sganarelle find a doctor’s costume--a black smock, white ruffle collar and pointed black hat--and goes off to be a doctor. He soon finds that he likes being a doctor, saying at one point, that being a doctor is the best job ever. The main reason is that if the patient lives the doctor is hailed and praised, and if the patient dies, the doctor simply shrugs and says that it is the will of God, in either case the doctor gets paid. Hmm…sounds a lot like modern medical care.

Sganarelle and his patient

the beautiful wet nurse

Later, when he asks a beautiful wet nurse to undress for an “examination,” her husband objects and Sganarelle says to him derisively, “How dare you contradict a doctor’s commands!” Even his lack of any sort of medial knowledge doesn’t stop him. He tells one patient that the heart is on the right side of the body and the liver on the left. When the patient points out that he has it backwards, Sganarelle’s response is the haughty and elegant line, “We have changed all that!” (Nous avons changé tout cela.)

Molière is anti-establishment and sarcastic, making fun of religion, the aristocracy, the peasantry, and anyone else he could squeeze into a play. I like that and I enjoy feeling Molière’s presence around me here in the Midi, in the richness of the language and the way people play with it. He's also alive in the cynical attitude people have towards poseurs and pomposity.

Next year, the Molière Festival will take place again  in Pézenas in early June and I have been asked to create an exhibition of the photos in this post--and others from the Festival—for the event. So, despite misplacing the moon, we found Molière; which I think made for a very good week in le Sud de France.

Nous avons changé tout cela!

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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.