Reduced French speed limit?

[tringy]

Hi all, I read on here some time ago that the limit on normal roads in France is to be reduced from 90 kph, but I can't find the post. Can anyone enlighten me on this please. Regards Tringy.

 

[Billggski]

From 1st July all roads without a central reservation will be limited to 80kph, (50mph), rather than 90(55 mph) for a two year trial period.

[Derek Uzzell]

The earlier forum discussion was this one:

 

http://forums.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/Motorhomes/Motorhome-Matters/90kph-down-80-in-France/48319/

 

A recent (yesterday) article about the forthcoming change is here:

 

https://tinyurl.com/ycfn3dkt

 

and guidance from the French police is provided here:

 

https://tinyurl.com/yaza3s86

[Billggski]

The links seem to imply that the roadsigns are not being changed immediately, so a 90 sign is actually 80?

Or is it like the UK where, unless it says otherwise, single carriageways are all 60mph?

[Derek Uzzell]

As i understand it, it will not be permissible to ‘modify’ an existing 90kmh sign to convert it into an 80kmh one.

 

This leaves three possible approaches:

 

1: Replace the 90kmh sign with a 80kmh sign.

 

2: Cover the 90mph sign.

 

3: Remove the 90kmh sign.

 

With some 20,000 90kmh signs on French roads, replacing them all would be a major and expensive task and highly unlikely to be completable by July 1st. Replacing certain 90kmh signs will be high priority (eg. a sign showing a speed-limit reduction from (say) 110kmh to 90kmh) but many of the present 90kmh signs could be safely covered or removed.

 

Whether France might adopt the UK policy of not signing speed-limits for UK roads that have the UK ‘national’ 60mph limit is anybody’s guess. The current French plan seems to be to replace all their 90kmh signs with 80kmh signs.

[blaven]

Any thoughts of whether the Garmin updates for Europe will address these changes and show the revised speed limit?

[Derek Uzzell]

As I understand it, the French bureaucratic process that will ratify the speed-limit reduction has yet to be formally completed - though there’s little likelihood that the French ‘national’ speed limit will reduce from 90kmh to 80kmh on 1 July 2018 and that the reduction will have been properly 'signed off’ by then.

 

Garmin and TomTom both reacted fairly quickly to the the French requirement that the exact locations of speed-cameras not be provided to drivers via sat-navs, so I’m sure that those companies will react similarly to the speed-limit reduction.

 

I don’t know how easy it would be to make a blanket-change to the mapping data so that every current French 90kmh speed-limit becomes 80kmh, but Garmin/TomTom will have known about the forthcoming change since January and I expect have plans in place.

 

This link is to a TomTom forum entry

 

https://en.discussions.tomtom.com/map-quality-75/a-new-french-speed-limits-1034032

 

But I can’t find anything ‘official’ on-line from TomTom or Garmin about when an update should be available.

 

Logically, any sat-nav sold in France from 1 July 2018 OUGHT to reflect the lowered limit, so perhaps updates to existing devices will be offered speedily.