Michelin Driving Times
 

Michelin's website (www.viamichelin.com) purports to give driving times between destinations in France. Has anyone found them to be accurate?

Debra---<BR>The driving times by Michelin are usually as reliable as the traffic in Italy; sometimes it flows nicely and sometimes it doesn't. You can generally rely on their times, but I would add a safety factor if you have some critical schedules to meet.

I printed out a number of their routings last summer for France, Spain, and Italy and the times were incredibly accurate for us.

I've used their route planning for Spain and France and have also found their driving times pretty much on the money, more accurate than <BR>Shell Geostar and MapQuest.

We were in Europe Sept-Oct and found viamichelin.com to be far more accurate and up to date than mappy.com<BR><BR>

I happen to prefer mappy for France, although I sometimes crosscheck with Michelin. The times are going to be more accurate for the autoroutes than for the secondary roads, where you may be slowed by traffic and be unwilling to pass in such a confident manner as the locals do.

Debra, great idea to post this question. It needs a poll of several people to get an answer that approximates 'reality.'<BR><BR>Most of the time I'd say Michelin gives the minimum driving times. You may need to factor in about 25 per cent more time if you run into traffic slowdowns, etc. We found these slowdowns could happen on both the autoroutes and the secondary roads. Since these slowdowns are hard to predict, I'd follow Wayne's advice and never base a critical deadline on these driving times.

If it is absolutley critical then allow 25% more time, but I have found Michelin to be almost 100% acurate, if you are going point to point. we always find someplace we want to stop and explore in France where we use it most, we never take the A roads, much prefering the slower, more scenic N roads. So it depends if you are in a rush or want to see and experience something.