The association 40 million motorists invites Internet users to give their opinion on the speed limit of 80 km/h on the secondary network and on a possible return to 90 km/h. With the results of this consultation, it intends to question the candidates for the presidential election.
A few weeks before the first round of the presidential election, the association 40 million motorists wants to question the contenders for the Elysée on the unpopularity of the lowering of the speed limit to 80 km / h on the roads of the secondary network without central separator, acted in 2018, and on the confusion generated by the many departmental roads which go back to 90 km / h by derogatory decree. To do this, the organization has put a public consultation online and invites Internet users to express their opinion on this subject.
TO READ. The map of France of the departments which go back to 90 km / h
The speed limit may vary several times over a few kilometres.
A law with shaky foundations
It was in the summer of 2015 that the transition to 80 km/h was launched on an experimental basis on three national roads for a period of two years, with the aim of reducing road fatalities. At the end of this trial run at reduced speed, after a change of President and Government, no report was made public. Finally published in early 2018 by the DSR (Road Safety Delegation) under pressure from the Senate, the official report exposed a lax experimentation : surveys over only a few months, length of certain axes not indicated, improvement works on the roads concerned during the same period, etc.
Never mind ! 1er July 2018, the 80 km/h speed limit became nationwide law. To justify it, in addition to the mathematical reduction of stopping distances with that of speed, the Government relied on a Swedish study of accidentology dating from 1982. This would also, according to him, make it possible to reduce fuel consumption and CO emissions2 citing work by Ademe dating back to 2003. This time again, the measure was presented as a two-year experiment, on a larger scale. But the “review clause” promised for July 2020, a year certainly marked by the pandemic and its confinements, seems to have been forgotten.
TO READ. 80 km/h. No fewer deaths on the roads according to a new survey
80 km/h, acceptance or rejection?
With such bases, the reception of this measure was easy to predict. Since December 2019, an amendment to the mobility orientation law allows departmental councils to raise the speed limit to 90 km/h on the roads they administer, while national roads remain at 80 km/h. Many departments have done so, but sometimes only on a few axes. The secondary network is therefore studded with panels 80, 90, 70… A “godsend” for speed cameras. Since then, a few surveys have also shown that the accident record of the change of limitation was much less glorious than what Road Safety claims, which is careful not to detail precisely the figures and causes of accidents specific to the axes passed to 80 km/h in its balance sheets. The consultation of 40 million motoristsopen until March 27, 2022, proposes to vote in favor of one of these three statements:
- I would like to return to the regulations applied before the introduction of the LOM from 1er July 2018 (i.e. 90 km/h base or 70 km/h in dangerous areas);
- The current regulations suit me (i.e. 80 km/h base with the possibility for the departments to go back to 90 km/h);
- I would like to see the regulations applied between 1er July 2018 and December 26, 2019 (i.e. 80 km/h base, without derogation).
