Motorists continue to drive too fast on the highway, but leave a little more than a safe distance, according to a study presented this Tuesday by the Sanef group. For this study, Sanef filmed traffic at the end of March 2023 on an ordinary section (three lanes in open country) of the A13 (Eure) motorway, in the Caen-Paris direction.
“Speed remains at its highest level since the creation of the Sanef Highway Behavior Observatory” in 2012, the authors of the study underline.
42% of vehicles circulate above the authorized speed (130 km/h), compared to 38% in 2018. The average speed is 128 km/h. In the left lane, the average speed is 137 km/h for passenger cars, 7 km/h more than the authorized speed.
3% of drivers observed in all lanes combined even exceed 150 km/h. At night, during the week, 51% of drivers drive even at more than 130 km/h.
Safety distances are improving: 22% of vehicles are driving too close to the vehicle in front of them, compared to 29% in 2022. But they are less respected on weekends, with 26% of motorists not allowing even two seconds between your vehicle and the one in front.
The turn signal is not always used
The behavior remains constant: More than one in three vehicles drives in the center lane while the right lane is free, even when they can back up safely, according to the Observatory. On weekends, more than one in two drivers stays in the center lane. And the indicator is often still an option: 28% of drivers do not signal when passing and 39% when reversing.
The Observatory also studied the behavior of heavy vehicles on a section of the A1 motorway, hand in hand with Cerema, a public establishment under the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
25.5% of drivers do not respect the regulatory distance of 50 meters with the vehicle that precedes them. And 4.3% of heavy vehicles come to bite the shoulder, endangering damaged motorists, repairmen and road agents in intervention.
The year 2022 had been marked by a sharp increase in motorway mortality, with 166 recorded fatal accidents, compared to 119 in 2021 and 140 in 2019 (2020 marked by the pandemic). On all French roads, the number of victims remained stable compared to 2019 with 3,260 deaths in the year.
Source: BFM TV
