Trip to France shows how horribly UK drivers are treated

Summer holiday season meant I recently spent a couple of weeks in France, and the difference in how drivers there are treated, and how they act, was stark.

I’ll start with where they get it right, and the big one is parking. Out and about every day, from town to beach to shopping centre, we didn’t have to pay for parking once. Head down to Camber Sands in East Sussex on the south coast of England for more than three hours and you’re looking at £24. 

A few hours in a town centre car park won’t be much better, so we saved enough money for a couple of family meals out on holiday. It really highlighted just how reliant UK councils have become on motorists coughing up to park their car everywhere they go, not to mention all the lovely fines that are increasingly franchised out to private enforcement firms. 

I also don’t remember even seeing a pothole on the generally smooth and well maintained roads, while the cycle lanes are a dream for anyone that wants to get their kids out on two wheels. And for those so inclined, a good number of big supermarkets had decent – in terms of quantity and speed – charging for electric cars. 

Maybe it’s some sort of aged stereotype, but I was also surprised by the French drivers’ attitude to queuing in their cars. Even coming down a sliproad to join an existing queue on the main road, everyone was filtering in at the first opportunity in a polite and well mannered way. Compare that to the UK, where drivers will pull onto a disappearing sliproad to get a mere five cars further ahead in that M25 tailback. 

But there is a flip side. For example, imagine the reaction if you tried to charge a UK motorist more than £100 – the cost of our 500-mile trek back to Calais – to drive the fastest way from Brighton to Edinburgh. Yes, the French roads are generally empty and fast-flowing with their higher 130km/h (81mph) speed limit, but you pay through the nose for the privilege. 

It took the best part of three hours less than if we’d avoided toll roads, though, so especially with kids it’s a bit of a no-brainer. But fuel consumption is noticeably higher at autoroute speeds, so you’re playing an interesting time versus money game on a long run as you compare ETA with MPG.

And then there’s the French attitude to roundabouts. In the UK it’s generally simple in terms of lane discipline, indication and car positioning, but it’s a dangerous game to make any such assumptions on the other side of the Channel. I’d never realised we were so disciplined over here! 

Then there’s the tailgating. Or driving as it’s known in France. The nation’s drivers are entirely comfortable sitting at road-rage-provoking proximity, sometimes at rather high speed, and no-one bats an eyelid. It’s not quite at the levels of spatial awareness in Italian city centres, but it’s in that ballpark. 

As a little aside, rolling off a ferry at Dover is the perfect example of how the UK treats its drivers. There’s a long-term shambles of temporary lanes and cones, badly signed to seemingly deliberately trick you into heading up the wrong road. A somewhat welcoming signal that we were home!

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