Driving in France (1 Viewer)

[BILL 875]

Thanks for all your replys heres another thing for you if you don't see any traffic on the right you are more than half way across the junction and then wham from nowhere I suppose that's bad luck and your fault by the sounds of it.

Bill

 

[Cavs]

Blinkin heck, just go for it they do!

I agree - that's how I got across it first time. I hadn't a clue what was going on so I just headed for my exit straight across. Seemed to work fine. Probably they all saw an English registered car and kept out of the way.

 

[BILL 875]

Thanks DBK that about sums it up perfectly, looks like I'm done for then.

Bill

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[John de Manche]

Thanks for all your replys heres another thing for you if you don't see any traffic on the right you are more than half way across the junction and then wham from nowhere I suppose that's bad luck and your fault by the sounds of it.

Bill

A friend was t-boned by another car at one of these junctions. The French driver said he was at fault at the scene but changed his mind after speaking to his insurance company,and our friend was at fault.
These junctions are a particular problem in our area. Many of them are in the bocage country where the roads are in a cutting,and you can't see if a vehicle is coming from your right until you are virtually at the junction.

 

[Abacist]

As a teenager back in the late 1960's I had an exchange with a French family who lived in Louviers, Normandy, North of Paris. The father, a surgeon, drove us all to Paris in his Citroen DS11 to go to the cinema and I was sat in the front passenger seat. He blew the car horn at every single junction we went through all the way to Paris as a warning to anything he couldn't perhaps see! Talk about getting a headache because I wasn't used to it!

Depasser is the french verb to overtake but it is also very common to use the word Doubler to mean the same thing in case anyone comes across this and does not understand.

 

[GeriatricWanderer]

And here is the full blown version of that road sign.
Rarely seen in it's full glory but a very clear warning to first timers in France and a reminder to those of us who think we know how to drive there but can get horribly caught out by this little piece of history with or without it's legend.

And don't believe for one moment that French drivers don't use their right of way at these junctions - especially those of a certain age and most especially, tractor drivers!

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[****]

Im sure its the same in Holland. Might just be smaller slow streets or pushbikes but they all seem to stop and let folk out where my mate lives.