This Saturday noon, with the crossover between the Juillettists and the Augustians, a peak of 762.4 kilometers of traffic jams was reached.
A predictable event, occurring every first weekend of August, but which in no way prevented many French people from taking the car.
So why do people who know how to get up at three in the morning to see the end of "Games of Thrones" live not know how to anticipate such predictable traffic jams?
This Saturday noon, there were more than 750 kilometers of traffic jams all over France.
The famous crossover weekend will have kept its promises, the departure of the Augustians mixed with the return of the Julyists will not have failed to block a lot of roads throughout the country.
Chronicle of an announced bazaar.
So much so that one wonders how it is possible that this scenario, so predictable, repeats itself every year?
Are the French really unable to anticipate?
Laetitia Dablanc, director of research at the French Institute of Transport Science and Technology (IFSTTAR), is indulgent: “Many French people anticipate and manage to hit the road either before or after, but there are enough left to create caps!
There are also incompressible personal or professional constraints.
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The sum of individual stresses
Not to mention the lack of credible alternatives: "The train remains expensive if there are several of you, not practical with luggage and above all there is currently not enough capacity in the trains which would allow a massive postponement, merely.
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For Jean Viard, holiday sociologist, it is the whole country that pushes the French to hit the road during these famous pivotal weekends: “Summer is not just about individuals who are on holiday.
The whole company is on vacation.
“And to evoke pell-mell the companies which close at the beginning of August, obliging the workers to take leave at this time, the school holidays, the weekly rentals imperatively from Saturday to Saturday, but also a certain historical tradition: “ In 1936, during the first paid holidays of the Popular Front, the date was set from August 1 to 15, ”he recalls.
Enough to encourage, by generational mimicry, to do the same.
For the specialist, it is above all a sum of individual constrained decisions which are added: “The grandparents who bring the children back to their parents, the latter who go on vacation directly afterwards, in addition to the workers… Not to mention all foreigners traveling through France to go to Spain.
Everyone does it because it's the most practical for them, or even because society forces them to.
But all of these decisions lead to these collective traffic jams.
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Traffic jams not so badly experienced
To the point of creating traffic difficulties throughout the country, therefore.
What if, deep down, the Frenchman didn't care about spending a day in traffic?
Laetitia Dablanc supports the idea: “If the traffic jams are hard to live with, people see them above all as “a bad time to pass” and prefer to suffer them rather than lose one or two days of vacation.
Tolerance to congestion is probably higher than you think.
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Same analysis on the side of Jean Viard.
If Bison Futé plays the apocalyptic day, the sociologist believes that a cork, “is not death.
Even less these days with air conditioning, traffic information and very good motorway surveillance.
Not to mention that during black days, trucks are banned from circulation, which is the great fear of the driver, much more than the traffic jam.
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And as he reminds us, the traveler has no standard duration value to complain about: “The Paris-Côte d'Azur journey is made only once a year.
So, whether it takes two more hours or not, the vacationer will not see the difference.
It's not a habit he would see broken.
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Towards solutions in the future?
The country therefore seems doomed to suffer traffic jams at each pivotal weekend.
Beyond individual users, can nothing be done at a state level or on the side of motorway companies to fight against the phenomenon?
Laetitia Dablanc does not want to be so immobilist: “Regulation by tariffs of road use is quite possible.
It is absurd to charge the same rates on the motorway on off-peak days and hours of the year and on peak hours and days, ”she pleads.
She mentions in particular the possibility of better railway alternatives, in particular with the opening to competition of the SNCF, and “in the long term, the smoothing of speeds, when the vehicles will be more connected – even automated, which will have an impact.
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What to hope for fluid highways the first weekend of August?
The research director showers all hope: “Let's not dream, there will always be more demand that weekend than during other weekends!
Come on, have a good wait on the highway!
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