Illustration of a gendarmerie vehicle involved in a road accident, here near Rennes. - C. Allain / APEI / 20 Minutes

  • This Wednesday, the prefect of Loire-Atlantique called on road users to "pull themselves together".
  • Speed, alcohol, inattention ... He denounces a "slackening of behavior"

There have already been six since January 1. But already last year, the number of road fatalities has increased sharply in Loire-Atlantique. So much so that this Wednesday, the prefect launched "a cry of alarm" about road safety. "Our fellow citizens must pull themselves together," said Claude d'Harcourt, whose services counted 71 deaths in 2019, 38% more than in 2018. "The paradox is that there were fewer accidents and fewer wounded. But some have adopted a behavior that I would call "no limit" ", he believes, speaking of a" brutal "phenomenon.

At the association of the league against road violence, we share the same observation. "The infrastructure is quite good, the number of kilometers traveled has not changed, but the accidents are more and more serious," said Claude Chabot, the departmental vice-president. There is more risk taking, especially with regard to speed and alcohol. For the first factor, responsible for 20% of fatal accidents, institution and association point to the numerous damage to speed cameras, which occurred in late 2018 on the sidelines of the movement of "yellow vests".

“It was at this point that we saw a sharp increase in speeds. Difficult to see it as a coincidence, said Johann Mougenot, director of the prefect's office. Especially since even degraded, the radars continued to flash. With offenses up 10% and speeds that have sometimes peaked. According to the gendarmerie, major excesses of more than 50 km / h increased by 76% in one year.

Another problem: inattention

If the situation has not improved on the main roads, it is in the city that it has deteriorated the most. A third of the victims were killed in built-up areas: most of them among "vulnerable users", that is to say pedestrians (13 killed), cyclists (6) or motorbike and bicycle drivers (17). In Nantes, for example, a major black series touched elderly people, fatally mown as they crossed the street. "As with other fatal accidents, we notice inattention among drivers," explains Benoît Desferet, departmental director of public safety. In the city, sources of distraction can be important, and the first is the use of the mobile phone while driving, which is only increasing. Alcohol is also there: 15% of the checks carried out were positive.

Evolution of the number of deaths on the roads in Loire-Atlantique - Prefecture of Loire-Atlantique

So how can we stop this worrying increase? "We are defenders of the limit to 80, still there must be means to enforce it," says Claude Chabot. This Wednesday, the prefecture confirmed that degraded radars would be completely replaced, some by the famous turret radars (one is already at the entrance of the Cheviré bridge), which are notably capable of flashing in both directions. Experiments with speed cameras on board unmarked cars driven by private companies are also to be deployed in the Pays de la Loire region in the coming months. "Repression but we also have a lot of prevention to do, says the prefect Claude d'Harcourt. We are going to target certain users, and in particular the "occasional bikers", who do not always master their motorcycles very well. "

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  • Road accident
  • Nantes
  • Road safety
  • Society