Allow me to introduce Louise the Vespa scooter (the Scooter company named all their bikes, they also had a Thelma). She helped me get around Paris this past August. Unfortunately, during my trip, Louise came to a rather untimely demise one fateful evening on this street. For reasons I’m still trying to ascertain, the vespa collided with a Mercedes Taxi, resulting in this. I am dying to know what caused this terrible accident.
I know that I turned off of Boulevard St. Germain onto Rue Lagrange, and was traveling on that road, going straight, when suddenly a Taxi appeared and the next thing I know, my friend Daniel and I are flying through the air.
Last week, we finally received the French Police Report. Some friends have translated portions of the report for me, and I believe this statement from the Taxi driver (Armand) may be the most important:
Je soussigné Armand d’éclare que je roulais en venant de la place Maubert en allant vers le Quai Montebello, quand tout a coup un scooter venant de ma gauce ma percute sur le bas de caissa de ma vouture en me refusant la priorité a droit.
I believe the Taxi is saying that I neglected to give priority to his car which was turning right onto Rue Lagrange from one of the sidestreets. But this doesn’t quite make sense to me. At least here in Canada, if a vehicle is travelling straight, and there are no stop signs (though Paris has practically no stop signs anyways) or traffic lights then all other vehicles wanting to turn onto said street must yield to the vehicle driving straight. Is this not the same in Paris? What else could I be missing?
Sorry I can’t provide a translation - my French is practically non-existent - but I think you have been caught out by the old rule of French driving, “Priorite a Droit”. From a site advising British drivers in France:
I, undersigned Armand declare that I was enroute from Maubert place, in the process of going toward the Quai Montebello, when all of a sudden a scooter coming from my left (should be “gauche”?) struck me on the underside of ? of my car, refusing me the priority of (me being on the) right.
The word that you have as a question mark is “bas de caisse”, some part of the car body. I have no idea what you would call it in English, but it looks like some extra part that you can add to your car. See picture here (the long thin part that you can attach under the door) http://www.ultratuning.com/fr/produit-937-bas-de-caisse-ajustables-la-paire.html
Muffin: Thats very nice of you to ask! Yes we’re both fine. I had four stitches on my nez (nose) which healed nicely, some cuts and a sore leg (muscle damage). Daniel fractured a minor vertebrae and I believe (we live in different countries) he has fully recovered too.
So immediately upon colliding with the taxi, lots of french people rushed to our rescue, including an off-duty soldier who knew first-aid. We were both promptly taken to the same hospital as Princess Diana after her accident and seen right away. I got my stiches and x-rays for free, my friend had to stay overnight and so some charges were billed to his university’s insurance company.
Just looking at that map gives me a headache. No semblance of a grid. Now that I’ve heard of this “Priorite a Droit”, I’m certain that Paris may be the one place in the world in which I would not attempt to drive. With all of those non-90-degree corners and T intersections, I just don’t think I could handle it, and this is from someone who has driven over a million miles in the past 20 years.
Is it only like this in Paris, or is this common all over Europe?
I think this is fairly common in Europe. Many of the towns and cities there have been around for centuries. They are not normally nicely planned out in a regular grid system like in the US.
I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a grid in a major European city, but I may be forgetting. And the grid certainly isn’t universal in the US. Ever drive in Boston?
As far as I remember, priority-to-the-right exists most places in Canada as well (also in the US?). However, there are few uncontrolled intersections where it would become relevant.
Priority-to-the-right is the rule in Germany, as well, unless you have the yellow diamond sign to show that your lane has the right of way. That and the placement of the traffic signals were the hardest things to adjust to after I moved here from the States.
Spain has something similar, plus we have a nice umbrella rule called “road courtesy.”
Different kinds of roads have different priorities. In general, a faster road has priority over a slower road; the cars inside a roundabout have priority over those trying to join the roundabout.
You are supposed to “facilitate joining in,” that is, to let people trying to [exit a garage / join a big street from a small street / join the highway / etc] do so, insamuch as it doesn’t involve an enormous effort on your part or obstruct traffic. So for example on the highway if there’s an in-ramp ahead and visibility isn’t very good, most drivers will move over to the passing lane, not because they’re passing anybody but in order to “facilitate.”
If there’s no other signs or indications of priority, the right has priority.
It took one of my brothers a while to understand why, when he was trying to join a roundabout, the drivers already in would basically zoom/crawl by: because the roundabout has priority. According to rule 3, he would have had it; according to rule 2, the guys already in the roundabout should have left him in if their doing so will not otherwise slow traffic behind themselves.
The “do not obstruct traffic” rule is a big one here, I flunked my first US driving license practical because I didn’t know what a “3-point-turn” was. In Spain it’s reason enough to lose your license till the cops get tired of hearing you whine (and they’re all deaf), because it’s considered “obstruction.”
The part of Barcelona called L’Eixample is a grid. There’s many European cities which are recent enough (due to catastrophe or rapid expansion during the last two centuries) to have planned areas, but which don’t occupy a space flat enough for a grid: Santander and Bilbao are examples of this case, the first due to catastrophe and the second to expansion.
Essentially true in the US. The rule, as I learned it, was that uncontrolled intersections are to be treated like 4-way stops. So if two vehicles reach the intersection at the same time, the one to the right has right of way. That being said, most American drivers are either ignorant of that rule or don’t realize that they are going through an uncontrolled intersection. They are sufficiently rare that people just don’t think to check for them.
