PM in favour of speed limit cut
Edouard Philippe says he would be in favour of a reduction to 80kph on certain roads - but a decision will not be made until January
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would be in favour of a reduction in the speed limit on departmental roads from 90kph to 80kph.
As reported, road safety group La Comité interministériel de sécurité routière, is to decide in mid-January whether a speed reduction would be implemented on roads without a central dividing barrier.
"I am in favour [of a reduction] because two-thirds of accidents are concentrated on stretches of two-way national and departmental roads that are currently limited to 90kph," Mr Philippe told a press conference in Coubert, Seine-et-Marne.
Road safety associations say that cutting the speed limit could save 400 lives a year, but motoring groups are opposed to the idea.
It was announced on Monday that 281 people were killed on France's roads in November, an increase of 23 on the same month in 2016.
The number of road deaths in France rose for the third year in a row in 2016, with a total 3,477 people killed. It is the first time since 1972 that the number of people killed on France's roads has risen for three years. So far this year, figures appear on a par with 2016, still way above an ambitious government target set in 2014 to reduce the number of road deaths to less than 2,000 by 2020.
An experiment involving a reduction in speed limits on 81km of French departmental roads ended on July 1, 2016, but no results have been published.
