• Despite a court decision asking it to do so, the Hérault department has indicated that it has no intention of removing the 90 km / h signs.

  • The administrative court had pointed out that the return to 90 km/h on 25 road sections had not been sufficiently motivated in the decrees.

  • For his part, Nicolas Gou, the president of the League against road violence in the Hérault, who had seized the administrative court, is dismayed.

"It's appalling!

Nicolas Gou, president of the League against road violence in Hérault, is stunned: the Hérault department has indicated that it has no intention of removing the 90 km/h signs.

However, on April 5, the administrative court of Montpellier, seized by the association, canceled the 25 decrees taken by the community regulating at 90 km/h instead of 80 km/h the maximum speed authorized on 25 sections of roads which do not have center dividers.

The law authorizes the department to carry out this increase, and justice has not called into question its merits.

But, according to the court, he was insufficiently reasoned.

“The reasons allowing this increase, in particular with regard to accidentality”, were not specified, point out the judges, who had fixed the return to 80 km / h on June 1.

"A study that lasted almost a year and a half"

But the department will not touch the signs, he said, the day after the judgment.

“The department had prepared for it and legitimately took over (…) new specifically reasoned orders, which make it possible to definitively maintain the 90 km/h limit signs on the 350 km of main departmental roads concerned”, i.e. 8% of the road network.

The department told

20 Minutes

that it had returned to 90 km/h, “after a study that lasted almost a year and a half, under the aegis of the State, with the road safety services.

(…) This choice also responded to a request from local players, confirmed by the study we conducted.

»

As a snub to the defenders of lowering the speed to 80 km/h, the Hérault department specified the day after the judgment that "90 km/h is the maximum speed authorized on these routes, but that nothing 'prevents those who wish to do so from driving more slowly to enjoy the roads and landscapes of Hérault'.

“Between 80 and 90 km/h, there is an additional stopping distance of 13 meters”

Not going back to 80 km / h is a mistake, deplores the president of the League against road violence in the Hérault.

Especially since the neighboring departments have retained this speed limit.

“Between 80 and 90 km/h, there is an additional stopping distance of 13 meters,” explains Nicolas Gou.

It is the length of a bus, it is still not negligible in case of need to stop suddenly.

“In the event of a frontal impact, a risk on these roads without central separators, when driving at 90 km/h instead of 80 km/h, there is” 25% additional energy, continues Nicolas Gou.

This can turn a serious accident into a fatal accident.

»

Nicolas Gou notes that the accident figures in the department also show that it is urgent to abandon the 90 km / h.

If we disregard the data for 2020, a year marked by Covid-19, there were 70 deaths on the roads of Hérault in 2019, and 5 more in 2021. At the same time, mortality in national level has dropped, notes Nicolas Gou.

It went from 3,498 in 2019 to 3,221 in 2021. A comparison that seems relevant, since the department has ironed the roads at 90 km / h in 2020.

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