Stop markings in France

[Norfolktolancashire]

On my latest foray into Brittany, France, this summer I noticed that there are many more "stop" markings on local roads. These are being used to slow traffic down as most French drivers fully stop at these lines, even in rural areas.

I find it slightly odd as French drivers I find are quite impatient and I would have thought would treat these as a give way scenario.

Here is an example of the markings and how rural the area is.

www.google.co.uk/maps/@48.1976859,-4.30 ... 384!8i8192

[Bryn666]

That one seems to be as if you steam through you run the risk of hitting oncoming traffic.

[M19]

I've just returned from Brittany last weekend. Since last year a rural lane that leads from Lavor to Pont l'Abbe has stop lines at junctions that effectively formalise the priority from the right rule that has existed on that lane. Other traffic calming features, including priority chicanes have been added in places that you normally see in urban areas. Looks temporary though, as traffic calming in France is done to high standards with a lot of green landscaping in islands and build-outs instead of the gobs of tarmac filled build outs, islands, and death by hatching that ruin the visual quality of streets in the UK.

[Norfolktolancashire]

I've just returned from Brittany last weekend. Since last year a rural lane that leads from Lavor to Pont l'Abbe has stop lines at junctions that effectively formalise the priority from the right rule that has existed on that lane. Other traffic calming features, including priority chicanes have been added in places that you normally see in urban areas. Looks temporary though, as traffic calming in France is done to high standards with a lot of green landscaping in islands and build-outs instead of the gobs of tarmac filled build outs, islands, and death by hatching that ruin the visual quality of streets in the UK.

I have to say I was impressed by the general cleanliness of the approach roads to each village. The planting was well done too, something that could be done over here with a bit of community help.

[Owain]

I've just returned from Brittany last weekend. Since last year a rural lane that leads from Lavor to Pont l'Abbe has stop lines at junctions that effectively formalise the priority from the right rule that has existed on that lane. Other traffic calming features, including priority chicanes have been added in places that you normally see in urban areas. Looks temporary though, as traffic calming in France is done to high standards with a lot of green landscaping in islands and build-outs instead of the gobs of tarmac filled build outs, islands, and death by hatching that ruin the visual quality of streets in the UK.

I have to say I was impressed by the general cleanliness of the approach roads to each village. The planting was well done too, something that could be done over here with a bit of community help.

Everything about roads in France is done to an exceptionally high standard. Every time I drive around Leeds, I am appalled at how our own standards appear to have declined dramatically since only a few years ago. Presumably 'austerity' is to blame.

[Berk]

That one seems to be as if you steam through you run the risk of hitting oncoming traffic.

No, it seems to be switching priority to the lane, so they always have priority. Bit like signalised T-Junctions.

Are the rules of the road being changed by stealth??

[Bryn666]

Given that in France the default is priority to side roads anyway...

But if you look immediately beyond the junction there is a priority sign before the sharp left hand bend which presumably causes oncoming vehicles to take the full width available. THAT is what the Stop sign is for.

[Berk]

Given that in France the default is priority to side roads anyway...

But if you look immediately beyond the junction there is a priority sign before the sharp left hand bend which presumably causes oncoming vehicles to take the full width available. THAT is what the Stop sign is for.

Fair enough, but why doesn’t the side road have a stop sign too, in that case??

[Bryn666]

Because they'll have better visibility of the bend?

[WHBM]

Every time I drive around Leeds, I am appalled at how our own standards appear to have declined dramatically since only a few years ago. Presumably 'austerity' is to blame.

No, but it's a good excuse.

Personally I'm appalled at how (some) contractors take the authorities for a ride on projects I pass, which is where I believe an unacceptable amount of the roads budget is disappearing to.

[A303Chris]

Funnily enough saw the same over most of France over the last two weeks as I went from Calais to Beziers, Nimes and the Pyrenees. Seems a common theme through the country

[Nwallace]

Been doing a fair bit of clicking around on GSV for planning a cycle tour to/from Paris-Brest
There does seem to be a lot of stop lines like that enforcing Priorite a D'Roit.

The general advice I've been given is to always assume it even when there's priority and give way signs...

[Nwallace]

Rode down to ramboulliet yesterday, stop lines everywhere, "fun" trying to work out if prioritee a' droit applies or not at various locations.

Only found one traffic circle, the roundabout format is pretty ubiquitous.

Every French Town worth its salt seems to have a one way system, and bonus points if OSM routing used by ridewithgps has it the wrong way round...

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[Viator]

Only found one traffic circle, the roundabout format is pretty ubiquitous.

I'm surprised you found as many as one! Having caught the bug a few years later than the UK, France is most definitely today the international leader in roundabout implantation. It's estimated that half of all the world's roundabouts are in France: some 30,000 at the last time of counting (six times more than in Germany).

I agree, by the way, with what others have said upthread about the aesthetics of modern French road design and everything to do with it. There is something so very "soigné" about the look, even in the humblest village. This is something that has by no means always been the case: I can remember what it was like, 30-40 years ago, when the first impression one got when crossing (say) from Flanders, was how old and battered all the road "furniture" in France looked. (Showing my age again -- now it's me that's o&b!)

[exiled]

France definitely likes roundabouts, I've noticed that where various town halls retain PaD it is increasingly signed as such.

[FosseWay]

Sweden has an obsession with roundabouts as well...

It sounds as if the French are making a concerted, if possibly subconscious, effort to reduce the number of junctions where PàD applies. The Swedes have been doing this for years, by adding yellow diamonds to main roads and give way/stop markings on side roads. As a general idea, I support this: where there is appreciable usage I feel that an explicit statement of who has priority is a good idea, and priority should be given to the direction that has most traffic, or failing that, according to whether there are visibility problems from certain directions and not others.

But there is a problem, in that PàD still applies in theory, even though the number of junctions where it applies in practice is reducing and (in Sweden) really only covers residential streets with a speed limit of 30 km/h or country lanes in the middle of nowhere. But people's experience of actually giving way to someone from the right is pretty small, and they either forget to give way when they should or they don't know how to react if someone else gives way "unexpectedly". And the number of drivers who give way to cyclists or horseriders from the right is microscopic.

Personally I think that PàD was outdated already before the Second World War. But it survived because it was used fairly widely. It should now be pensioned off in favour of marked priorities, and where priorities do not need to be marked because the roads are so small and little used, make it basically first come, first served.

[exiled]

Sweden has an obsession with roundabouts as well...

It sounds as if the French are making a concerted, if possibly subconscious, effort to reduce the number of junctions where PàD applies. The Swedes have been doing this for years, by adding yellow diamonds to main roads and give way/stop markings on side roads. As a general idea, I support this: where there is appreciable usage I feel that an explicit statement of who has priority is a good idea, and priority should be given to the direction that has most traffic, or failing that, according to whether there are visibility problems from certain directions and not others.

But there is a problem, in that PàD still applies in theory, even though the number of junctions where it applies in practice is reducing and (in Sweden) really only covers residential streets with a speed limit of 30 km/h or country lanes in the middle of nowhere. But people's experience of actually giving way to someone from the right is pretty small, and they either forget to give way when they should or they don't know how to react if someone else gives way "unexpectedly". And the number of drivers who give way to cyclists or horseriders from the right is microscopic.

Personally I think that PàD was outdated already before the Second World War. But it survived because it was used fairly widely. It should now be pensioned off in favour of marked priorities, and where priorities do not need to be marked because the roads are so small and little used, make it basically first come, first served.

Spain is another country where PàD is disapperaring and there is a roundabout in Italy at a junction with the A1 Autostrada del Sol that was PàD when we went through it years ago that now shows 'give way' on the entrances.

Out of interest, when Sweden went to driving on the right, did it import PàD at the time or had a variant of it already existed. I am aware a couple of countries that drive on the left have used 'give way to the right' as a default at different times.

[FosseWay]

Out of interest, when Sweden went to driving on the right, did it import PàD at the time or had a variant of it already existed.

Good question, to which the answer appears to be "more or less, yes".

According to the WP article on switching to the right, a number of changes to the rules of the road were made that were coincidental to the left/right change:

- PàG was replaced by "unconditional" PàD (in other words, PàG was mirrored and strengthened). [my scare quotes, see below]
- On leaving e.g. a car park or petrol station, priority must be given to traffic on the main line, including from the left.
- Crossing solid white lines in the centre of the road was prohibited.
- Walking against red was prohibited.
- Speed limits were introduced on all roads which previously had none, and the NSL sign was abolished.
- The definition of "motorway" was made stricter, leading to the reclassification of some former motorways as "motor traffic routes" ["happy car" roads].
- Certain kinds of roads were defined as being "main routes", including motorways and motor traffic routes, either by virtue of their category or by use of the yellow diamond, leading to exception from PàD for these roads.
- Road markings were changed from yellow to white.

That reference to replacing PàG by an "unconditional" (ovillkorlig) PàD intrigued me, because PàD is anything other than unconditional, even under the standards in force in 1967 mentioned above as applied to motorways, exits from car parks and so on. Some digging in the Riksdag's website yielded the original documentation surrounding the bill that later became the law that introduced right-side traffic. Here the vänsterregel (i.e. PàG) that applied at the time, 1965, is defined thus:

Den s. k. vänsterregeln i 48 § 2 mom. reglerar korsande möte mellan fordon i andra fall än vid infart på huvudled eller motorväg eller utfart från parkeringsplats eller liknande.
Enligt denna regel skall den som kommer från höger lämna företräde åt den som kommer från vänster. Emellertid görs det förbehållet att ingen förare är fritagen från skyldigheten
att vara försiktig, när han passerar eller kör in på korsande eller anslutande väg. Detta gäller särskilt den som från väg med ringa trafik kommer in på väg med livlig trafik.

The so-called PàG rule ... governs cases where traffic crosses paths other than when joining a main route or motorway, or when leaving a car park or similar. According to this rule, the driver approaching from the right must cede priority to the driver approaching from the left. However, this is under the condition that no driver is exempted from the responsibility to exercise caution when he drives past or turns into a crossing or joining route. This is particularly relevant for a driver on a road with little traffic who joins a road with heavier traffic.

(translated more exactly this time, including contemporary sexism)

Later in the document, the recommendations for change are discussed:

Den andra frågan av betydelse huvudsakligen för fordonstrafiken är innebörden av den s. k. vänsterregeln vid korsande möte. I promemorian uttalas att det oberoende av övergången till högertrafik finns anledning överväga en ovillkorlig företrädesregel, alltså utan det förbehåll som nu gör att vänsterregeln i vissa fall kan förlora sin giltighet. En sådan företrädesregel framstår som än mer önskvärd i samband med övergången, då givetvis utformad som en högerregel. Det skulle enligt promemorian sannolikt underlätta övergången, om förarna hade en ovillkorlig regel om att lämna företräde åt den som kommer från höger utan att behöva bedöma i vad mån en korsande väg skall anses ha ringa eller livlig trafik. [...] Härtill framhålls att en ovillkorlig företrädesregel med nödvändighet förutsätter att större vägar och gator, som har karaktär av genomfartsleder, utläggs som huvudleder och att trafiken på korsande vägar genom vägmärken åläggs att lämna företräde åt huvudledstrafiken.

The other question mainly relevant for motor traffic is the definition of the so-called PàG rule at crossings. In the memorandum it is states that, irrespective of the change to driving on the right, there are grounds for considering an unconditional priority rule, i.e. one without the exception that currently renders PàG invalid in some situations. Such a priority rule would seem to be more than desirable in conjunction with the change to the right, although obviously conceived as PàD. It would, according to the memo, probably help the transfer if drivers had an unconditional rule to follow on ceding priority to traffic from the right without having to judge to what extent the route they are crossing could be considered to be lightly or heavily trafficked. [...] In this context it should be made clear that an unconditional priority rule would necessarily require that major roads with the character of through routes be signed as such, and that traffic on side roads joining them be instructed to cede priority through road markings.

It goes on to say that there is no point erecting loads of new signs (which would take about a year, i.e. until well into 1966) when all the signs would then have to be changed the year after for driving on the right, so the change and the signage should apply from Dagen H itself.

So from the above I deduce the following:

- There existed a system of priorité à gauche when Sweden drove on the left, which to a great extent was similar to the modern right-hand equivalent but not identical.
- The original rule left a lot of the judgement as to what constituted a heavily trafficked road to the discretion of the driver, with the clear risk that the driver on one road might come to a different conclusion than a driver on a collision course on the other road.
- I'm not entirely clear whether the "huvudled" road sign (i.e. the yellow diamond) existed before 1967, but if it did, it was used much less extensively than now.
- At the same time as the switch to the right, there was a concerted campaign to mark through routes with diamonds, in connection with which the PàD rule was theoretically strengthened so that basically traffic from any side road on the right would have priority unless explicitly stated otherwise with the diamond, or unless the side road was so insignificant as not to apply (car parks, gas stations, driveways etc.).

In practice, the extremely wide use of the yellow diamond means that the only junctions to which PàD still applies are those where you are least likely to actually meet anyone and have to decide one way or the other. For example, in order to drive anywhere from my house I have to cross this junction (in the direction the GSV is pointing). There is no signage relating to priorities, there are no road markings other than the ones warning of the speed hump and the speed limit is 30 km/h - so PàD applies. It is very rare for *anything* to be approaching from the right when I drive down there, and visibility is good so I don't need to establish that at the last minute. And of those instances where there is a potential conflict I need to do something about, I estimate that in somewhat more than half of cases I stop and the person coming from the right looks at me gormlessly or actively signals for me to get on with it. I guess I am more attuned to PàD precisely because it's pretty much the only practical difference, apart from driving on the right, between driving here and in the UK, and I have taught myself to be especially careful about it, while for drivers trained in Sweden it is one of many rules they learn and not more or less significant than a bunch of others, but it then gets forgotten through disuse.

[exiled]

Interesting, thanks. I imagine that this more closely followed Danish practice at the time?

[FosseWay]

I have no idea - I don't have any experience of driving in Denmark (though I've cycled there a bit) and don't know the history. The Danes did not, of course, have the heaven-sent opportunity to make wholesale changes to road signage and rules that the side change afforded in Sweden.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on högerregeln I quoted above also says that Swedes driving in Norway for the first time should beware of the much wider application of PàD there. Apparently yellow diamonds are used less, and side roads on the right can have priority even where the mainline speed limit is 80/90 km/h. Such a road would invariably have diamonds here. (Haven't driven in Norway either.)