The return to 90 km / h, between "aberration" and "excellent news"

• Although the government lowered the speed limit to 80km/h on the secondary network in 2018, the departments have, since 2019, the right to lift this measure completely or in part.

• 20 Minutes

  asked the departments of Ardèche, Puy-de-Dôme and Aveyron why they had decided to raise the road speed limit to 90 km/h.

  Then, to our readers what they thought of it.

  Conclusion: the subject is as much debate as vaccination against Covid-19...

• The arguments of road safety, pollution and fuel consumption are used by the "pro-90" as well as the "anti-90".

There are debates where consensus is impossible.

The one on the speed limit at 80 or 90 km / h on departmental roads is one of those that we will take care to circumvent at the family meal.

Because between our reader Michel who would like to "return to the absence of limits" and for whom this is "excellent news" and Etienne who screams at the "scandal" and wishes that we do not exceed 70 km/ h, there is a gap.

And the maneuver to avoid the subject is likely to be complex, since it comes up regularly in the news.

As recently as the beginning of July, Puy-de-Dôme thus voted for the return of 90 km / h on all departmental roads.

It thus joins the ranks of departments that have almost completely given up on 80 km/h.

Thus, Aveyron, Allier, Creuse, Corrèze, Cantal and Ardèche have also decided to raise the speed limit to 90 km/h on the sections concerned as permitted, since December 2019, by the law of direction of mobility.

Thirty-eight other departments have also increased this traffic speed, but only on part of their road network.

For clarity (or not)

The president of Puy-de-Dôme assures him, the passage to 90 km / h is above all a practical question.

“The other bordering departments had already passed at this speed.

We were landlocked, people no longer knew how fast to drive, ”says Lionel Chauvin to

.

Same argument on the side of the departmental council of Aveyron: the comeback to 90km / h allows "a better understanding by the user" of the road.

Except that for some Internet users, the return to 90 km on part of the departmental roads is a real headache: “You never know if you can drive at 90 or drive at 80.” Another driver who takes the pass du Bonhomme between the Vosges and the Haut-Rhin says that now “on the Vosges side, we go from 80 to 90 km/h every 600 meters”.

Road safety, the large roundabout

When the government decided to lower road speeds four years ago, the main argument put forward was road safety.

A reason that many of our readers find justified.

“Lack of visibility, sinuosity, narrowness, very deformed road surface moreover shared with heavy goods vehicles who don't care… The departmental and national network is deplorable”, denounces Paul.

As for Matthieu, he assures us that “on our country roads, it is easier to anticipate the danger of a wild animal at 80 than at 90 km/h”.

But the argument of road safety is taken up with a completely different sauce by some claiming that at 80 km/h, driving is more dangerous.

“I feel like I'm losing my attention behind the wheel, I tend to look much more at what's around me than at the road!

“, explains Philip.

On the side of the departmental council of Aveyron as on the side of that of Puy-de-Dôme, we claim to have carried out accidentology studies on all the tracks and that they did not "show up any accident-prone areas" in in most cases.

The two departments have therefore decided to restore a maximum authorized speed of 90 km / h on most of their network and to lower it to 70 km / h on some portions deemed more at risk.

In Puy-de-Dôme, as in Ardèche where the same decision was taken for the start of the school year, we are sure to compensate with “significant investments in favor of safety such as the rectification of bends and the modification of the profile of the road”.

80 or 90, who will save the planet (and my wallet)?

For “anti-90s” like Philippe, driving at this speed is “an aberration as the planet is suffocating”.

Gérard goes even further: “global warming should push our (ir)responsible people to lower the speed to 70 km on the road and 110 on the motorway in order to reduce pollution and the release of greenhouse gases.

Moreover, going slower also means more money at the end of the month.

Matthieu thus considers that “it's a godsend to save a few liters on a full tank”.

But there again, for some, the eco-consumer argument does not hold water.

“The gearboxes of our cars were designed to run in 5th (or 6th) gear at a speed of 90 km/h, advances Christian.

By lowering the speed, we are slightly under revs and we increase consumption.

»

A waste of time, really?

Saving time is one of the arguments of the Aveyron departmental council: the return to 90 km/h will make it possible to "limit journey times to promote the economy of the territory".

But some Internet users have made their calculations and the economy often seems derisory.

One of them established that on his 50 km journey time between Château-Thierry and Epernay (Marne), where a 32 km section was recorded at 90 km / h, he gained "in all, four minutes on the road ".

Except that for others, put end to end, these less minutes of travel are not so ridiculous.

Denis explains that as a professional, he does 75,000 km/year: “I regularly cross France and for me time on the road is wasted time.

10 km less per hour means ten days of work lost at the end of the year.

"The department of Ardèche explains for its part to

that the "mountain areas already generate significant travel times" and that the department is the "only one in France to have neither motorway nor passenger train " .

The 90 km/hy are an essential need.

Fall into the (new) panel

There remains the argument on which everyone agrees: the panel.

Throughout this story, “it is above all the panel manufacturers who are going to be happy!

“, launches a user, joined by many others.

Indeed, changing the signage is expensive.

In 2018, during the transition to 80 km / h, the interministerial delegate for road safety (DISR) Emmanuel Barbe assured that the panels "had to meet very strict standards" and that, therefore, their price was "200 euros/piece”.

Our road safety report

For example, in the department of Ardèche where the switch to 90 km/h will concern 3,500 km of tracks, “the cost of replacing the panels will be around 60,000 euros”.

In Aveyron and Puy-de-Dôme, there are respectively more than 4,300 and 6,700 km of tracks that will have to be replenished.

Here too, the budget will increase, but for once it may be a debate over the currency that will save the dinner.

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