The Infamous Rouen Tunnel

Dwarfland

Dwarfland

Joined
Mar 24, 2019
Posts
177
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Location
Leeds
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59,329
MH
C class
Exp
5 years
I had an absolutely terrifying experience a couple of days ago and am hoping someone can explain what happened!

We were heading South on the A28 and pulled off the motorway to go to a Lidl on the outskirts of Rouen. We were using a motorhome satnav with our height 2.9m programmed in. The route seemed straight forward but for some reason the satnav seemed to complicate it and we ended up on what Google maps tell me is the N338. It’s a busy multi lane road approaching the De la Motte roundabout. As often happens in busy city centres, the satnav was struggling to keep up with the multiple exits and I found myself filtered into a lane with high kerbs making it impossible to change lanes and heading towards a tunnel which seemed impossibly low. I hadn’t noticed a height restriction sign and my satnav wasn’t flashing a warning telling me not to proceed. I reached the edge of the tunnel with traffic building behind me and was sure it was going to rip my roof off. I slammed the brakes on, then with cars behind sounding horns and no way out, edged slowly forward, thinking that a low speed impact would minimise the damage. Amazingly, I managed to crawl through unscathed. Almost immediately there was another similar tunnel and again nowhere else to go. This time I spotted a sign saying max height 2.6m! Again I somehow got through but it was absolutely terrifying. I’ve since checked on Street view and both tunnels have a 2.6m height restriction.

I’m left with a number of questions. I’ve emailed the satnav company to ask why the device didn’t sound an alarm and warning. I also don’t understand how I got through the tunnel (which I understand is quite notorious). Do the French understate height restrictions?

Not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry!
 

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Dwarfland said:
I had an absolutely terrifying experience a couple of days ago and am hoping someone can explain what happened!

We were heading South on the A28 and pulled off the motorway to go to a Lidl on the outskirts of Rouen. We were using a motorhome satnav with our height 2.9m programmed in. The route seemed straight forward but for some reason the satnav seemed to complicate it and we ended up on what Google maps tell me is the N338. It’s a busy multi lane road approaching the De la Motte roundabout. As often happens in busy city centres, the satnav was struggling to keep up with the multiple exits and I found myself filtered into a lane with high kerbs making it impossible to change lanes and heading towards a tunnel which seemed impossibly low. I hadn’t noticed a height restriction sign and my satnav wasn’t flashing a warning telling me not to proceed. I reached the edge of the tunnel with traffic building behind me and was sure it was going to rip my roof off. I slammed the brakes on, then with cars behind sounding horns and no way out, edged slowly forward, thinking that a low speed impact would minimise the damage. Amazingly, I managed to crawl through unscathed. Almost immediately there was another similar tunnel and again nowhere else to go. This time I spotted a sign saying max height 2.6m! Again I somehow got through but it was absolutely terrifying. I’ve since checked on Street view and both tunnels have a 2.6m height restriction.

I’m left with a number of questions. I’ve emailed the satnav company to ask why the device didn’t sound an alarm and warning. I also don’t understand how I got through the tunnel (which I understand is quite notorious). Do the French understate height restrictions?

Not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry!
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Know the feeling, we've been through that tunnel. When the van was new I measured it exactly and it's 2.67m unloaded with ½ a tank of fuel. So I continued and fortunately without incident. 🥵
 
Ouch, sounds like your very lucky as you must have been right on the safety height, bridges and tunnels are always slightly higher than the sign says.
 
Littlewheels said:
Was this the culprit? I’m surprised your SatNav didn’t indicate to stay right.


So glad you’re MH survived.
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No, someone told us about that one but ‘ours’ is on the photo I posted, no warning chains. A small sign but by the time you passed it at speed, with cars all around it was virtually impossible to get out of the Lane. Then the kerbs are a foot high so without reversing there’s nowhere to go!
 
Dwarfland said:
No, someone told us about that one but ‘ours’ is on the photo I posted, no warning chains. A small sign but by the time you passed it at speed, with cars all around it was virtually impossible to get out of the Lane. Then the kerbs are a foot high so without reversing there’s nowhere to go!
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Now we all have look out for another Tunnel to be aware of in the event we vere off route.😁
 
Littlewheels said:
Now we all have look out for another Tunnel to be aware of in the event we vere off route.😁
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We met someone who told us they’d spoken to someone who hit the warning chains the same day we had our near miss. This person apparently managed to reverse out and change lanes.
 
Dwarfland said:
We met someone who told us they’d spoken to someone who hit the warning chains the same day we had our near miss. This person apparently managed to reverse out and change lanes.
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Not an experience anyone would want,he was very fortunate.

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We did the same the first time through Rouen and had to reverse out. Luckily the following traffic was tolerant, probably locals used to visitors falling foul of it.
 
Neckender said:
A few years ago with our then Auto Sleeper Broadway I had to drive very steadily over the curb stones.

John.
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They looked about a foot high though obviously the damage to tyres and skirts would be preferable to a vastly extended sun roof!
 
Hope you had your brown trousers on. So either your satnav is useless or you haven’t set it up properly. Trouble is,once you lose faith in them,the satnav can become more of a hindrance than a help.
Ive found a good map is a very useful companion to the techie stuff.
 
Podney said:
Hope you had your brown trousers on. So either your satnav is useless or you haven’t set it up properly. Trouble is,once you lose faith in them,the satnav can become more of a hindrance than a help.
Ive found a good map is a very useful companion to the techie stuff.
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I’ve emailed them and asked for an explanation of why it wasn’t sounding alarms and flashing messages up. I can’t imagine they’re clever enough to have ‘genuine’ max heights in their system and even if they do, they shouldn’t be subjecting users to that level of stress!

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Satnav is only as good as the mapping info it uses it won't t be a fault with the satnav. It will that the mapping hasn't got the height info for those tunels.

I'm always surprised at how many people have problems with the Rouen underpasses as they are well sign posted.
 
Dwarfland said:
I had an absolutely terrifying experience a couple of days ago and am hoping someone can explain what happened!

We were heading South on the A28 and pulled off the motorway to go to a Lidl on the outskirts of Rouen. We were using a motorhome satnav with our height 2.9m programmed in. The route seemed straight forward but for some reason the satnav seemed to complicate it and we ended up on what Google maps tell me is the N338. It’s a busy multi lane road approaching the De la Motte roundabout. As often happens in busy city centres, the satnav was struggling to keep up with the multiple exits and I found myself filtered into a lane with high kerbs making it impossible to change lanes and heading towards a tunnel which seemed impossibly low. I hadn’t noticed a height restriction sign and my satnav wasn’t flashing a warning telling me not to proceed. I reached the edge of the tunnel with traffic building behind me and was sure it was going to rip my roof off. I slammed the brakes on, then with cars behind sounding horns and no way out, edged slowly forward, thinking that a low speed impact would minimise the damage. Amazingly, I managed to crawl through unscathed. Almost immediately there was another similar tunnel and again nowhere else to go. This time I spotted a sign saying max height 2.6m! Again I somehow got through but it was absolutely terrifying. I’ve since checked on Street view and both tunnels have a 2.6m height restriction.

I’m left with a number of questions. I’ve emailed the satnav company to ask why the device didn’t sound an alarm and warning. I also don’t understand how I got through the tunnel (which I understand is quite notorious). Do the French understate height restrictions?

Not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry!
Click to expand...
Looking at your photo it looks like you got in the lane which ducks under the roundabout. I've only seen these a few times but they do exist. The idea is to allow cars to drive straight on and not be slowed by the roundabout.

Because the main carriageway goes around the roundabout without any headroom restrictions the satnav will have assumed this was the way you would have chosen.

In the few times I've come across these there were signs in advance showing the height restriction in the outer lane - but these may not have been obvious.
 
Lenny HB said:
Satnav is only as good as the mapping info it uses it won't t be a fault with the satnav. It will that the mapping hasn't got the height info for those tunels.

I'm always surprised at how many people have problems with the Rouen underpasses as they are well sign posted.
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I beg to differ on this particular one. I’ve retraced our route on Google street map and the first visible height restriction sign is at the top of the slope leading to the tunnel, by which point, in heavy traffic travelling at speed, it’s virtually impossible to switch lanes safely.
 
People become task focused on their satnavs, one of the reasons I don’t use a truck one. It makes me read all the road signs and if I think it’s being stupid, I ignore it and rely on my own judgement.

Should have done that yesterday when I tried to get round Toulouse airport three times! If I had followed the signs, I wouldn’t have gone wrong. Should have turned it off. ☹️
 
Littlewheels said:
Was this the culprit? I’m surprised your SatNav didn’t indicate to stay right.

View attachment 604736
So glad you’re MH survived.
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Yes this got us a couple of years ago !!! Haven’t the foggiest how we got there. There was a tiny escape gap in the kerb and we scraped our wheels badly , but at least not the roof 🤪

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Googlebot said:
People become task focused on their satnavs, one of the reasons I don’t use a truck one. It makes me read all the road signs and if I think it’s being stupid, I ignore it and rely on my own judgement.

Should have done that yesterday when I tried to get round Toulouse airport three times! If I had followed the signs, I wouldn’t have gone wrong. Should have turned it off. ☹️
Click to expand...
I couldn’t agree more, sat navs have their uses but please don’t think that every narrow road and low bridge has been measured by Garmin, Tom Tom etc. I now use waze for directions and use my eyes and common sense for possible obstructions.
 
Will somebody please confirm, or alter my memory, about approaching the dreaded Rouen tunnel from the East and wishing to pass South of the city that one should cross the river then take the first exit right to drop down to the road along the river.
 
nicholsong said:
Will somebody please confirm, or alter my memory, about approaching the dreaded Rouen tunnel from the East and wishing to pass South of the city that one should cross the river then take the first exit right to drop down to the road along the river.
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You need to head for the D6015 before the river.
 
We did exactly the same in 2009.

The hanging height warning (that we didn't see) smashed our rooflight but we managed to make it through the tunnel.

We had no choice but to give it a go because we couldn't change lanes and there was a huge queue of cars behind us with loads of stroppy Frenchmen honking their horns.

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Chris said:
We did exactly the same in 2009.

The hanging height warning (that we didn't see) smashed our rooflight but we managed to make it through the tunnel.

We had no choice but to give it a go because we couldn't change lanes and there was a huge queue of cars behind us with loads of stroppy Frenchmen honking their horns.
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When we did it , it must have been a quiet time of day or something as we didn't get any honking, just helpful french guiding us back out, can't remember what we did after but we found some way out of it.
And I don't know about signs, I never saw any till the chains were banging the roof, and I had been following the signs to where we wanted to go so can't blame a satnav.
 
chaser said:
When we did it , it must have been a quiet time of day or something as we didn't get any honking, just helpful french guiding us back out, can't remember what we did after but we found some way out of it.
And I don't know about signs, I never saw any till the chains were banging the roof, and I had been following the signs to where we wanted to go so can't blame a satnav.
Click to expand...
And all this was before I was on here, I'd never heard of them.
 

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