Speed limit cut 'won't work' - survey

Two out of three people in France believe cutting the speed limit on departmental roads to 80kph will have little effect on road safety, according to a survey.

The poll, published a day before the Comité interministériel de sécurité routière is expected to announce that the speed limit will be cut along some 400,000km of secondary roads, found that most people believe the measure is more to do with increasing revenue through fines rather than road safety.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has already voiced his support for cutting the speed limit, saying he is prepared to be "unpopular" in an attempt to cut road fatalities, which have . He told Journal Du Dimanche that he "understands the arguments" of motorists angry at the plans, but that it is intended "to save lives".

"There are 3,500 deaths and 70,000 wounded a year, 70,000! After decades of progress, our results have deteriorated. Well, I refuse to consider this as a fate," he said.

But motorists' lobby group 40 millions d’automobilistes has pointed out that a Danish experiment conducted in Denmark, in which the speed limit was increased from 80kph to 90kph on a portion of the secondary network, cut road deaths by 13% over two years.

A representative sample of 1,000 French people aged 18 and over took part in the online YouGov survey for news website 20minutes.fr