Tips on driving in France

ttt 4 later

I wish I had this info a month ago! Especially the point about the signs and the arrows.

This is coming from someone who has driven in France many, many times. But driving in the cities, especially in the south of France, can be crazy, crazy with the arrows pointing in a zillion directions and instinctively you know when you're heading in the wrong direction.

Bringing a portable Tom Tom (GPS) was invaluable just because of those nutty signs -- and in places like Nice, where a map isn't going to tell you that the whole city consists of one-way streets (all going the wrong way!).

So. . . thank you!

bookmarking

An important point about the name boards for towns is that it also indicates you are entering a 50km zone. The board with a line through it means you are leaving the 50km zone.
This is true in very many European countries.
White lozenges with a yellow lozenge inside it is also an important sign to know as it means you have priority - a line through it and it is prioté a droit - cars coming from the right have priority. Again this is true in many European countries.
In the Netherlands cyclists also have priority at these crossing if coming from the right, but don't expect them to give you priority if you are coming from their right.

Thanks Larry. I've saved this post and know it'll prove helpful for our trip next fall.

Nicely done, Larry. Thanks.

AA

Bookmarking - great information. Thanks!

Larry, I don't plan to drive in France but I have been to Provence and so enjoyed following your personal journey. I will save Kristin word-a-day site.

Thanks for sharing...and greetings from Boston (Lynnfield)

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words, and I'm glad to see that I don't seem to have said anything terribly wrong.

I've added a bit to the site: a disclaimer, since I'm not really an expert, and two items suggested by "hetismij" (thanks, hetismij). These are a mention of the 50 Km/hr default speed limit in towns (which I didn't know about), and a mention of the diagonal yellow square "Priority route" sign. I had puzzled over the latter while in France, but didn't figure out what it meant until I returned, and then I forgot to mention it on the page.

One thing I can't figure out is why they like to use the diagonal yellow square "Priority route" sign, instead of the triangular version also shown on my page, whose meaning is much more obvious.

Surfergirl, you reminded me that I've also used a Garmin GPS in Europe twice, once in Italy, and once in France. I've commented on that usage in my trip reports, and I really ought to gather those remarks up and add them to this page. Used carefully, I found the GPS to be of tremendous value, but you have to know when to ignore them. It would be interesting to compare notes on the TomTom vs. the Garmin units. I get the impression that the TomTom is a bit better in Europe, and the Garmin a bit better in the US. I do know that with the TomTom, you can get driving instructions in English, while having the street names properly read in the local language (e.g. French or Italian). The Garmin, oddly, can't do that - it does everything in only one language at a time (at least, my 2-year old Garmin Nüvi 650 does - maybe they've improved it since).

Latedaytraveler, we're in Wayland, MA. Come to the next Boston-area get-together - you just missed one:

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia/boston-2009-gtg-october-10-2009.cfm

Larry

I'm in the midst of a driving trip in France, Germany and Austria and for the first time I'm using a Garmin Nuvi 680 in Europe. Generally I'm very pleased with it, but I'm finding that the horrendous mispronunciations of place and street names are useless to the point of being laughable. I'm tempted to switch to the German language setting, but am afraid I might miss a key direction. I have something of the same problem at home where a number of streets have French names and the Garmin mangles their pronunciation.

The only real problem I've encountered here with the Garmin is that it repeatedly tried to send me down a pedestrian only street in Mittenwald. I think the problem was that the street is only closed to cars from 10:00 to 17:00.

Other than that, it's a great improvement over the past when we needed one person to drive and the other to navigate.

The English translation for the TomTom was great, and I used a female English accent, since on our Prius, it has a female American accent (she is called "Jeannie" after "I Dream of Jeannie" -- spirit in a bottle, so to speak). You do have to periodically turned the damned thing off or ignore certain things, but we downloaded France before taking it over. It was cool.

One thing that drove us nuts (and I speak French, so it was particularly embarrassing to me) is that we couldn't figure out what the word "rappel" meant under a speed limit. I kept thinking "remember", but it didn't seem right. Finally figured out it loosely translates to "reminder" to remind the motorist that the speed limit is, say 30. Just thought I'd mention this in case someone was wondering too.

hetismij's point about the speed limit changing at the town sign ... it's a really good piece of information. I have twice driven through police radar traps shortly after passing a village sign. In both cases I had slowed down to about 55 kph, but it is pretty easy to breeze past one at 90, especially when the sign is way out in an unpopulated area.

If you add it to your web page, I think you could explain that the speed limit drops to 50 kph at the town sign "unless otherwise indicated". I add that condition simply because there are sometimes long approach roads to villages, in which case you can see a stepped down reduction: 90 to 70 at the town sign, and later a drop to 50 when it starts to get built up. But my understanding is that if there is no other speed posted, it's 50 kph at the sign.

One other unique situation to be explained: driving in a city and seeing a sign that says "Toutes directions". My first encounter was in Avignon years ago. I was trying to drive from the old downtown railway station towards Apt. The car rental agent had told me to look for green signs saying Apt, but we first encountered a green "Toutes directions" sign, which we finally figured out means "go this way to get to a point where you can choose from several destinations". Sure enough, it led to the Avignon ring road, where we had a choice of green signs for Nîmes, Orange, Apt, Cavaillon, and Marseille.

Just as an aside, one of the things I like about driving in France is the visibility, uniformity, and consistency of signage. Drive there enough and you find the signs exactly where you expect them to be and saying exactly what you expect them to.

Oh, and one other experience: when I get back to Nova Scotia I am always surprised at how wide our roads are here. I also look for the little traffic lights at eye level, but we don't do that here.

AA

'rappel' = reminder of a restriction (such as speed limit or no passing/overtaking) that already is in force, i.e. not at the start of the restriction.

One thing I can't figure out is why they like to use the diagonal yellow square "Priority route" sign, instead of the triangular version also shown on my page, whose meaning is much more obvious.

Easy.
The diagonal yellow says that you are driving on a priority road:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Zeichen_306.svg&filetimestamp=20060731054004
The road is no longer a priority road when you pass this sign:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Zeichen_307.svg&filetimestamp=20060731054253
This sign also gives you priority but ONLY at the very next intersection:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Zeichen_301.svg&filetimestamp=20060731052756
The triangular red means that you do not have the priority and must yield:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Zeichen_205.svg&filetimestamp=20060729000318

The good thing about learning sign language is that you can use it in most countries on this planet. Even in China, but even you can read them, it may sometimes be hard to follow them:
http://bloggingtom.ch/wp-images/ownimg/articles/20071007-china-verkehrsschild.jpg

Larry, your invaluable advice about the totally eccentric French direction signs brought back memories of my first ever trip to France 30 years ago, long before GPS. Not long off the channel ferry and heading south through the Normandy countryside, we were confronted by one of the direction signas at a cross-roads. Convinced it meant turn right, we did so and found ourselves heading down a busy but narrow country road without many places to turn back. Our misfortune did however lead us to a wonderful small cafe where we enjoyed a delicious rustic lunch of soup, crudites and fresh bread.

Gordon_R wrote: "... the totally eccentric French direction signs ..."

They are not totally eccentric. They are universal in France, and are consistent. We don't travel in order to experience elsewhere what we can experience at home.

Oh c'mon, lighten up Padraig. In my dictionary, "eccentric" means something that is unusual or peculiar. You can't deny that the convention adopted in France for direction signs is unusual to those from other parts of the world and a peculiarity of France motoring.

I wrote earlier about the horrendous pronunciations of street names on Garmin with the English voices ("Jill" and "Emily") . When we were driving today, I switched the voice to German ("Steffi"). Much better!

I'm delighted by all the responses on this thread, and I'm learning a lot of things which I'll use to improve my web page.

laverendrye, on our most recent trip, the GPS drove us into a dead end in Arles. But I think it was the problem you describe - a street that's open some of the time, but blocked at other times. In Arles, steel posts that must be about 25 cm in diameter rise up from the pavement (or cobblestones) at certain hours to make some of the streets off-limits. I assume someone comes by and activates a control. I don't think they just come up on a timer, because there would be a risk that a car might be passing over at the wrong moment.

I did once see a car drive up to one of these posts, and the driver pulled out something that looked like a garage door opener control. He aimed it at a receiver mounted alongside the road, and clicked a button. The post withdrew into the ground, the driver drove over it, and the post re-emerged. I imagine he was a local resident entering a restricted area.

Surfergirl and Alec, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for finally explaining the mysterious "rappel". I've been traveling to France from time to time over a fifty-year period, and never until now understood what that meant. For a while, I interpreted it somehow to mean "slow down", but that really didn't make any sense. I don't know where I got that idea (I speak French too), but I really didn't know what to make of it. I'll eventually get this onto my web page.

AnselmAdorne, thanks for the suggestions. I've already got something like the "unless otherwise indicated" wording on the page. The "Toutes directions" signs might be worth mentioning - they just tell you how to get out of town, prior to actually choosing where you're going. I always found their meaning to be pretty clear, but in a way, they are sort of amusing - a sign saying "Everywhere". I may have to go back to France to get some photos to add to my page.

Cowboy1968, thanks for clarifying the difference between the two "Priority route" signs. I'll add that to the page soon. Your links to sample signs is also great - I had trouble finding some of these on English and French web pages, but I didn't think of trying German sites. On the other hand, the example you gave of the "End of priority route" sign is a bit different from the one normally seen in France, in that it has three diagonal lines across the yellow diamond. In France, there's usually only one line.

Gordon_R and Padraig, I'm sure we don't want to start a flame-fest here on whether or not to use "eccentric" to characterize the French signage. Of course, we always do better if we "lighten up", but I agree with Padraig that the French signs are extremely consistent. They only seem odd to people used to different conventions.

Actually, I don't think they're just French. I think they are a European Union convention, coming from the "Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals". See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals

As such, they're consistent throughout Europe.

I think a similar stadardization is occurring in the US, under the auspices of the Federal Highway Administration:

http://www.trafficsign.us/

This is bringing much-welcomed order to the patchwork of laws, signs, and signals of the fifty different states, which probably caused a lot of fatal accidents in the past.

For instance, when I first moved to Massachusetts, a left-pointing green arrow on a traffic light meant "You may turn left". To the total astonishment of many out-of-state drivers, it did NOT mean "Any conflicting traffic has been stopped". Rather, it was just the "permission for a left turn" portion of a green light - YOU STILL HAD TO YIELD TO ONCOMING TRAFFIC. Drivers from out-of-state would assume they had priority, make a left turn, and be struck by oncoming traffic.

That has now been changed to bring Massachusetts into line with the Federal standards: if you have a left-arrow, the oncoming traffic has a red light.

laverendrye and Surfergirl, more on GPS usage and the reading of street names later - I've got to get going now.

- Larry

I've updated my web page on Driving in France, at:

http://ljkrakauer.com/travel/france/drivingetc.htm

I incorporated most of the suggestions made earlier on this thread, and added a section on our use of a GPS in Europe (we've now used it in Italy and France). I think I'll declare it "done" at this point, unless I discover some error that needs correcting.

Thank you all for your help.

Larry

I generally treat GPS as in-car entertainment, particularly on navigating between towns. In towns, I find it more useful -- especially for finding a good route out to the highway.

One tip if you are going to a town about which you know nothing: set "Republique" as your destination in the town, as most French towns seem to have Place de la Republique at the centre.

Good suggestion, Padraig. Often the GPS is just not satisfied with putting in a City name. Perhaps that is the equivalent to "Main Street"?!

Place de la Gare is also an almost universal location in the towns of France.

A further note on Garmin. Twice today, "Steffi" tried to lead us down one-way streets the wrong way en route from Munich to Bamberg, but she was faultless in taking us to our hotel in the Bamberg altstadt.

Padraig and kerouac, thanks for the suggestions. These French equivalents of "Main Street" never occurred to me.

This is one reason I love posting on Fodor's - the posters have so many great ideas.

laverendrye, I wonder how long these standalone GPS units will survive. When all our data move up into the "cloud", and all our devices are permanently on-line to the internet like the iPhone, having your own seldom-updated copy of the maps will seem stone-age. Maps in the "cloud" can be always up-to-date.

Larry

Great reference!

I am considering to travel alone in France in Dec, including a plan to drive for a few days in Southern France. Is it difficult (if I have GPS) for a female to do this alone?? I have driving experience in US and UK before but were driving with friends.

justretired,

you're right, you will find slightly different designs in different countries. But the overall appearance of the sign will remain the same.

Finding the way to the city center has become easier since more and more countries use the "target sign" to designate the route to the center of town. I don't find a sample pic, but the sign looks like one (or more) concentric circles and a big dot in the middle (all in black on white).

I was reading your excellent little driving guide, justretired, and there are two little things that it might be useful to point out.

1. The horodateurs for parking in the city of Paris do not take coins. They were being pillaged too much so now they only take special chip parking cards (sold in a tabac) and Moneo electronic minor payment cards. NONE of them take coins, which is a big problem for tourists, because the parking cards on sale often have a much greater value than a visitor is planning on using (even the people from the suburbs of Paris feel they are being ransomed for this). The only solution that I can offer for this particular problem is never to park on the street in Paris and only use the underground lots. For anybody with a "disabled" parking card, it is also good to know in Paris that parking is free in both the disabled and the normal surface spots for anyone displaying the card. I don't know about other French cities for this.

2. When turning left at a large city intersection, cars generally create an invisible roundabout and turn around the back of each other rather than facing off like in the U.S., so you should advance almost to the end of the intersection while waiting to be able to turn. If you don't advance enough, cars facing you and wanting to turn left can become quite annoyed that you are blocking them. However, you will find certain cases where cars WILL turn left in front of each other, depending on the configuration of the intersection. Common sense and practice will indicate which method to use.

Great idea and a wonderful resource for people about to drive in France for the first time.

As to whether TomTom is superior to Garmin in Europe it's hard to say... I have a TomTom which I thought worked brilliantly but have never used a Garmin to compare.

But what might make a difference is the TomTom feature that allows other users to make corrections and updates to maps. TomTom then checks them and they are downloaded as you update your device. Maybe that makes them more current?

Rob

When I see how many streets of Paris change direction regularly (sometimes temporarily due to road works), I can't imagine any GPS system keeping up with it.

Priority on the Right, though now there are usually yield signs on side streets in some towns like Orleans there are still unmarked side streets where drivers IME will take their priority on the right, rightly so, but as a surprise to folks not used to the idea. Always look for traffic coming non-stop from the right, even from side streets - though rare to not be marked yield there are indeed some - i just experienced last year in Orleans.

Larry,

What a great list of driving tips. I've made a link to it in my France notes. Thanks so much for putting it together.

Thanks for all the comments and the compliments.

aliceyyy, with a GPS, I don't think you would have any problems. Without the GPS, it's hard to drive in an unfamiliar place without a navigator, because you can only hold so much in your head before you have to pull over and consult the map again. The GPS makes it very easy (and never gets angry if you make a mistake). Your wording seems to imply a worry that it might be more difficult for a lone woman than for a lone man, but I can't think of any reason why that would be so. This is France, not Saudi Arabia.

Cowboy1968, I've never seen one of those target-like "city center" signs in France, or anywhere else. But at least now, if I do see one, I'll know what it means.

I generally don't like icons on the computer. Unlike words, if you don't know what they mean, you can't look them up in an alphabetized list. At least on the computer, you can often "mouse-over" an icon, and a little yellow box will pop up and tell you what it means. I've seen plenty of traffic signs whose meaning was a total mystery to me, but I can understand their use in Europe where so many different languages are spoken.

kerouac, I like both your suggestions for the page, and I'll try to add them soon. I gather that the horodateurs in Paris won't even take a French "chip and PIN" credit card, but a special pre-charged card is needed. I haven't been to Paris in a few years, so my advice is slanted to the countryside. But I've always thought of you on Fodor's as "our man in Paris".

One thing I thought of adding to my page is my brief posting on taking the TGV from CDG, which appears in the Forum at:

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/on-the-road-in-lyon-ecole-des-trois-ponts-and-provence.cfm#comment-2921222

I might need to augment it a bit. For instance, I now tend to buy pre-paid PREM tickets on the web, and you don't need to "composter" them. I don't know if you need to pick up your tickets in the same way if your ticket is part of a multi-part air ticket (my earlier notes are now five years old).

And I really ought to have photos: of the sign announcing the trains, of the sign indicating your répère, of the cars themselves, and the LCD signs showing the car number. Sort of like the great photos of CDG that you've been posting, kerouac, only specific to the TGV. For kerouac's posting on CDG and the RER, with a link to his photos, see:

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/surviving-cdg-airport-rer.cfm

Larry

is parking still free in Paris during August? And in most cities?

justretired - certainly an impressive and valuable compilation. Cheers.

Yes, Palenque, it is still free on SOME streets. You have to look at your friendly local horadateur to know if it is free or not. On the ones in Paris, there is a little zone at the bottom, outlined in green, if I recall it correctly, that says when things are free (in French only). At worst, this would be dimanches et jours fériés (Sundays and holidays), sometimes samedi (Saturday) is added, and of course if you are lucky in the summer, you will find the word août (August) also on the list.

A good summary.

Didn't spot this above, but the "you are entering xyz town" sign ( http://ljkrakauer.com/travel/france/mazanenter.jpg ) also means this town has priority from the right.

This can be over ruled by stop / give way signs and painted road signs on individual junctions.

If the road you are on has priority the town sign will be next to a diamond priority sign.

Major roads passing through small villages generally have priority.

Smaller roads in smaller towns are still priority from the right.

And priority from the right is perhaps the only road rule that is always obeyed !

Take care.

Peter

Oops - just found an amusing town sign that illustrates the combined entry to the town, 50 km limit, and "you have priority" sign : http://www.2nice4u.net/images_membres/150.jpeg

Peter

"If the road you are on has priority the town sign will be next to a diamond priority sign."

Thanks, Peter. While I had figured out some of the logic of French road signs (including the yellow diamond on highways), I hadn't connected the dots when it comes to towns and yellow diamonds. It makes perfect sense, and the absence of such a sign now makes even more sense: priority to the right unless otherwise controlled.

AA

Major roads passing through small villages generally have priority.>

usually but not always - in the case of Orleans where i drive frequenbtly - so always be vigilant of traffic possibly darting out from minor streets onto main drags IME

Are you saying that Orléans is a village?

I've updated my Driving Tips page at:

http://ljkrakauer.com/travel/france/drivingetc.htm

I've included most of the excellent suggestions made on this thread.

I didn't include Kerouac's note on making left turns, because I really have no section on driving techniques, and also I suspect this is rather a larger and more ideosyncratic topic. When we were learning to drive, back in the Stone Age, when we rode dinosaurs like Fred Flintstone, Margie and I were both taught to turn our dinosaurs cars to the left by turning around an opposing left-turning car, leaving the other car to our left. In actual practice, however, not everyone does this. People seem to do what is convenient, based on the geometry of the intersection, and the local conditions.

Here in the center of Wayland, for instance, cars going north-south mostly turn when they have left arrows giving them the right of way. Despite the fact that the intersection is wide, they almost always cut the corner, and leave the opposing car to the right, in order to make the turn faster. But in the wide intersections of Los Angeles, turning from one multi-lane road to another, it's really necessary to turn around the other car.

Margie pointed out some tips in the Fodor's (printed) guide "Exploring France", and I added the following to the page:

Lights: The [Fodor's] book says, "If another driver flashes his headlights at you, this means that he has priority and you should give way." If that's the case, it's the opposite of the convention in the US, where (at least here in New England) if a driver flashes his lights, he's telling you to proceded, and he will yield.

What do you folks think of that? If it's correct, it could cause a lot of trouble.

Larry

That's a bunch of hooey. Flashing lights either mean "go ahead" or "you're a stupid ass" and you usually know which interpretation is appropriate.

Of course, on the autoroute, if you are going the maximum speed limit of 130 km/h in the left lane and a car comes roaring up behind you at 180 km/h, the flashing lights mean "move or die."

Fashing lights can also means "watch out, cops ahead".