Invited Tuesday of Europe 1, Matthieu Flonneau, historian of mobilities and motoring, estimated that the ecological stake, which pushed the Citizen Convention on the climate to propose a lowering of the speed limit on motorway, finished by sweeping away the social role of the car.

INTERVIEW

This is one of the suggestions that has caused a lot of ink to flow: the Citizen's Climate Convention proposes to lower the maximum limit on motorways from 130km / h to 110km / h. Over a distance of 100 kilometers, the journey time would drop from 49 to 57 minutes, but would save 1.5 liters of fuel, or 4 kilos of CO2 less emitted into the atmosphere, according to a simulation carried out by Europe 1 on a section of the A13 between Paris and Caen. But for Matthieu Flonneau, historian of mobility and motoring, the ecological issue too often tends to overshadow the social dimension of the automobile.

A proposal likely to rekindle certain social tensions

"Today is a societal and political debate that mobilizes ecology", points out Matthieu Flonneau. "When the first limitation measures were adopted in 1974, there was first an imminent concern for road safety, because in previous years there had been 16,000 deaths on French roads," recalls this historian. But now, while road safety policies have drastically reduced mortality on the roads, the climate dimension has taken over.

Also, this historian sees in this proposal, which the executive is called to seize, "an attack against this totem of the old world which is the thermal automobile". "This Convention had the hope of appeasing part of the anger of the 'yellow vests', especially around the question of 80km / h. We are very far from it, it will revive old debates', warns Matthieu Flonneau.

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"The automobile represents a public service"

"The objective is to spread the taste of the automobile," sums up this specialist. But in his eyes, "archaizing" the road system is to forget that the car remains an essential mode of circulation in the French countryside. "The automobile represents a public service. It is a fundamentally republican question, a question of homogeneity of the territories in France", insists Matthieu Flonneau.

Furthermore, he believes that the adoption of this measure would betray a "paradox of macronism" since Emmanuel Macron, at the time when he was in charge of the Economy, under François Hollande, had favored the deregulation of coaches.