French Politics

It's less about reducing the number of accidents (which it actually does; lowering vehicle speed means better reactions by drivers), but reducing the lethality of each accident that happens. An average 10 km/hr reduction will have a massive effect on who can survive the impacts, and how disabled they turn out to be.

It's why the UK has 20 m/hr speed limits in residential areas: it increases the likelihood of pedestrian survival, even if speeders speed over the calculated limit. They still reduce their overall speed, even though they go over the lower limit. Speeding at 30 m/hr is not speeding the same route at the previous 45 (and winding up in hedges or splitting kids along the pavement).

edited 11th Jan '18 5:06:33 AM by Euodiachloris

Anyone care to convert this change into MPH for me and the Americans that are used to MPH?

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

80km/hr is about 50mph.

...Yeah, I can see why drivers would be pissed off.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Increased likelihood of walking three months after an accident vs hanging dead from your seatbelt, brain pulped by your own skull. <shrugs>

edited 11th Jan '18 5:27:09 AM by Euodiachloris

50 seems reasonable for a number of roads, in the U.K. you get 60/70 on motorways and other big roads, 40 on what I guess you’d call suburban roads and 30/20 on residential roads with actual houses.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

AFAIR, currently in France, the "default" speed limits in mph are (approx.):

• 31 mph in town
• 56 mph out of town (which they want to reduce to 50 mph, which is the current "under rain" speed limit),
• 68 mph on minor highways (62 mph under rain),
• 81 mph on big highways (68 mph under rain).

Which means you can't time-travel without breaking the law.

edited 11th Jan '18 6:14:00 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Diddums. Seriously, nobody really needs "limits" of 100 km/hr. As a species, we're not good enough with neurological processing and judgment calls to travel much beyond the lower limits you're busy complaining about.

Especially given the fact that Europe has roads with actual bends in them that were, for example, originally laid to herd geese down vs those American grid nightmares of soul-crushing blandness.

edited 11th Jan '18 6:27:03 AM by Euodiachloris

Some studies (done in the US, I think) showed that people tend to drive at the speed they're comfortable with (which depends on factors such as visibility, road quality and traffic load), regardless of the posted speed limit. While reducing the speed people drive would reduce both the number and lethality of accidents, reducing the speed limit won't appreciably reduce the speed people drive at. If our government was seriously committed to security, it'd invest in road repairs, lighting on roads (this has actually decreased despite a proclaimed concern about security) and stuff that really makes roads more secure.

There are also increasingly numerous parts of towns where the speed limit is 18 mph. There have also been talks to make this the norm.

I'm not a crazed driver, in fact, I do my best to stick to the speed limit at all time (it can be harder than it sounds when you don't have cruise control, or have to change speed too frequently). But constantly reducing the speed limit sometimes feel as if they were more concerned with getting more fines. Also, I'd really, really see more fines for the drivers who are glued a few feet behind your rear bumper because you happen to be following the speed limit.

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

"constantly reducing the speed limit sometimes feel as if they were more concerned with getting more fines"

That makes no sense to me. You see the limit at 70 km/h, why the Hell would you speed?

edited 11th Jan '18 10:20:58 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Contrarianism.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

It would if people actually paid attention to speed limits. I know plenty of people who simply say "screw this, there are no speed camera there" and simply speed up (there are also recorded cases of speed limits at 70 kph on straight, slightly downward roads with a speed camera hidden somewhere. Given that fines are proportionate to the difference with the speed limit, lowering them mathematically raises the average fines for those who simply speed up without considering the limit.

There is also the fact that most cars in France still use manual transmission. 80 kph usually corresponds to the limit between fourth and fifth gear, so you will have to decide whether to drive in fourth gear (and burn more fuel), or fifth gear but be at the risk of accelerating without noticing.

Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.

Those are definitely money traps. And 30 km/h is so low it's really hard to keep to, unless the road is terrible (say, a graveled road instead of a paved one).

Two breaking news from politics in France :

- Delphine Batho, Ecology Minister in the early days of the former presidency, sacked unceremoniously in 2013 for openly complaining about the chronic "under-budget-ment" of her Ministry, is now campaigning for her own candidacy to become the new Chief-Whip of the Socialist Party.

Against the heavyweight figures of Stéphane Le Foll and Olivier Faure, you gotta be honest :

Good luck with that ... But at the very same time, to be honest, I hate the Socialist Party so much for the moral and financial ruin they brought upon our country that I would love to see her succeed just to seed even more division and defiance among the leftwing of the political spectrum in order to blow it up even more to make sure the left , and even more so any new reincarnation of the Socialist Party, will never gain back power in this country...

- Alain Juppe, founder of the main right-wing party in France called "The Republicans" back in 2002 when it was envisioned as little more than just a more or less informal alliance across the whole nation to rally the right-wing behind the candidacy of Jacques Chirac against the National Front , has announced today that he was pulling out of the national decision-making bodies of the Republican Party. He complains that the party is now frankly heading toward the far-right to "hunt" the traditional electorate of the "old" National Front , the fringe version of the FN back in the late eighties when it was led by a "flamboyant" Jean-Marie Le Pen who was heavily inspired by Ronald Reagan .

Seeing the Stalinist score of Laurent Wauquiez in the last election among party members for the designation of the Chief-Whip of the party, and the utter failure of his radically europhobic team in uniting the Republicans, it's probably the least hurtful way this pack of knots could be resolved for both Wauquiez AND Juppé...

edited 15th Jan '18 11:36:56 AM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

The more I read about Juppé in a general way, the more he comes across as kind of a tragic figure (in a "shot by both sides" way by different parties and factions), with the exception of his (former or current) position as Mayor of Bordeaux (I'm not aware of what he did there, tho).

edited 15th Jan '18 11:37:08 AM by Quag15

The right-wing in France is suffering from recurring, uncurable Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, and the poor guy was no exception in that he was unceremoniously stabbed in the back by his very boss Jacques Chirac to "redeem" his own political scandals from back when he was the Mayor of Paris . Alain Juppé is by far, and by all standards one of the least indecent major political figures in our history, but he happened to serve the wrong boss at the wrong time and got burnt by his own minor affairs to appease the crowd about the much deeper and more scandalous affairs of Jacques Chirac .

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

Please don't confuse the Parti Socialiste of the last decade and the left. Hollande completely betrayed his voters by enacting right-wing economic policies.

Oh I'm not confusing them, far from it ! I understand your point of view, you have every goddamn right to feel yourself betrayed by this party and the policies they installed since they got themselves elected on lies and turned their back on their voters the minute after.

No, I'm still saying it conscenciously, and I assume my political opinions without wanting to drool all over it :

To me the Socialist Party of France is still a leftwing party, even though it may be still not far enough on the left to the taste of its original voters, which like every leftwing party in this country since Mitterand included has brought moral degradation and fiscal recklessness to unprecedented levels every year, one after the other. And don't worry, I'm not only counting the time they spent at the national level but also the apocalyptic management of the regions and of the départements they have been entrusted since the beginning of decentralisation .

Meanwhile I like the new team in charge now, I support them in the few steps they are doing right and I understand that it's not easy to shake out decades of fiscal wackiness, but I'm disappointed they still are clouded in the mystic of the more leftist half of the Republic on the Move that profess the state cannot spend less than the tiny and ineffective budget cuts they're doing on the margins while our deficit is sinking further.

I believe that somewhere inbetween the American neoliberalism that brought misery to the USA and the French overdose of state interventionism that brought misery to our own country, there is still a bit of room for fiscal responsibility, ascetic fairness and the reconsolidation of our moral values and that to be fair, Macron is going in the right direction, but far from enough .

I am utterly devastated that every time we have to speak about fiscal common sense and the reduction of our galloping social expenses the debate is immediately reduced between the suppression of the nationstate or the suppression of capitalism ...

edited 15th Jan '18 12:09:45 PM by Nuup-Kangerlua

Liberty, equity, autonomy ! Proud neoliberal cuckservative whore ! Now for sale !

Juppé is one of the few men on the right I have a rather positive opinion of. He is not perfect but at least he looks like he actually cares about doing something because it is important, instead of doing so because it advances his career. Even though I admit that his party's standards are pretty low (I have a soft spot for Raffarin too - he is enjoyable at least).

Macron has ruined him anyway. They have very similar political lines, but EM is younger and more charismatic. If Juppé hadn't founded the party, and wasn't fundamentally a gaullist, he would have no reason not to join LREM. It is no surprise that Juppé's right-hand man is now our Prime Minister.

As for the PS, they are also doomed by Macron. The silver lining is that LREM is a one-man party, and that it is likely to disintegrate once his mandate(s?) is(are?) over. So in either 4 or 9 years, the PS will have its center-left place again. It just has to survive until then, or hope for a big political mistake by Macron that would lead to a split of his majority.

Is Melenchon strong enough to hoover up the NPS and other left-wing shards of the PS?

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

You talk of decentralisation, but AFAIK the time when there was the most of it was when the right had state power but lost all regions save one. They promptly decentralised so they could make it look like they lowered taxes while evil left-winged regions rose theirs...

edited 16th Jan '18 12:39:50 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

... So, that was the motive for the change. How did that episode work out in practice?

The results from the presidential election made me think France's PS could probably make a recovery by moving further left and appealing to the voters who went for Mélenchon. Is that not a possibility?

A sizable part of LREM elected officials come from the PS, it's pretty hard for them to claim to be on the left at the moment, especially as Mélenchon and his group are the only vocal opposition to the government - the FN is in shambles and LR is torn between those who enjoy silently what Macron does and those who are going with Wauquiez in pretty much replacing the FN.

Given how Holland and Valls (and some of their predecessors) tainted the name "PS", I think they'd have better chances dissolving the party entirely and joining Mélenchon's.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."