Some Changes In France |
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File under France
Author: Mike Werner
Location: Normandy, France
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Maximum Speed
The new President of France and his cabinet have been very active, not to our best interests. The bad news is that they are planning to reduce the maximum speeds on the roads of France.
Autoroutes/Freeways are currently limited to 130 kph, and they want to reduce it to 120 kph (like most European countries), while countries roads will be reduced from 90 to 80 kph. The reason, this time it's not to save lives, but to reduce pollution.
The law change has not been accepted, or even voted yet, but we can expect it by next year.
License Plate
On a different note, the politicos are also changing, yet again, the vehicle license plate format.
The old French license plate were made famous the world over in their old movies. With their black background and silver letters/numbers, they were great to escape radar photos. The black/silver number plates were as French as a beret, wine and Boursin cheese.
So, the authorities changed the coloring schemes, to a yellow background with black letters. As was the case with the black/silver plates, the last two digits showed you where the car was registered. Each "state" (=Departement) in France has 2 digits to identify it. 75 for example is the Paris area.
This year, they allowed a white background with black letters.
Still the license plates contained the Departement number.
Now, for 2009, the government has announced they are abolishing the 2 digit departement number. So you can no longer see where the car is coming from. It does make it easier to sell your motorcycle to someone in another department, since you don't need to change the registration number; it stays with the vehicle.
You can, optionally, place a sticker with your Departement number to the right.
To think I pay tax money for these people to come up with all these ideas....
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