Driving in France - Crit Air

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Thu 27 Sep 2018 23:11
Driving in France - Crit Air - Big John

Responding to something shown on the HJ site:-

:- www.honestjohn.co.uk/askhj/answer/109715/where-sho...n-

When I received my Crit-air sticker the advice for the sticker to be placed in the right . However on my Skoda Superb II it would have been firmly in the swept area and would have caused my car to fail an MOT fail (I asked!) . I then emailed the actually very helpful people who issue the crit-air and when I mentioned this problem they said :-

Bonjour, Vous pouvez effectivement coller votre certificat qualité de l'air à gauche de votre pare-brise si la réglementation de votre pays vous interdit de le mettre à droite. Cordialement,

Translated Hello, You can actually stick your air quality certificate to the left of your windshield if your country's regulations prohibit you from putting it on the right. Regards,

In addition I've just got back from France and have noticed that there seem to be more speed cameras compared to last year (not that I intentionally speed) and beware the new 80-kph national speed limit as if you are not aware most signs have not changed - just the usual leaving a town sign. You do usually get the 90kph limit if the road gets an overtake lane, this is well signed as is the 80kph as the road looses the extra lane.

Motorways and dual carriage-ways are the same as before.

Having a sanef.co.uk widget really helped. On some autoroutes if you have the technology you can take a different slip-road to avoid the toll queues!

Edited by Big John on 27/09/2018 at 23:46

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Sat 29 Sep 2018 11:55
Driving in France - Crit Air - Theophilus

You do usually get the 90kph limit if the road gets an overtake lane, this is well signed as is the 80kph as the road looses the extra lane.

I would second the recommendation for the Telepeage widget - it costs a few euros, but can save time and the frustration of trying to drive up close enough to the ticket machines for my wife to pay the toll!

Re the 80 / 90 kph speed limit on rural roads, I believe the 90 kph limit only applies if there is a solid central divider between oncoming traffic - not just double white lines.

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Sat 29 Sep 2018 12:15
Driving in France - Crit Air - Manatee

I drove across France and back a couple of weeks ago, total tolls around £54. I decided I wouldn't pay the extra for the widget, and the Halifax Clarity credit card is the cheapest way to pay in local currency - commercial exchange rate and no fees.

Virtually impossible to get the window of an MX-5 close enough for a short-armed Yorkshire wife to work the machine however - she could grab the tickets but I had to jump out to make payments. I was glad of the leg stretch!

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Sun 30 Sep 2018 22:17
Driving in France - Crit Air - Big John

Re the 80 / 90 kph speed limit on rural roads, I believe the 90 kph limit only applies if there is a solid central divider between oncoming traffic - not just double white lines.

On the stretch between Saumur and Poitiers and then further south there were two lanes one way (usually uphill) that had a 90kph limit and I can't remember a solid divider. The speed was well signposted for this though.

The bit that can catch you out is the limit as you leave a town as there is not any circular speed limit sign just a town sign with a line through it. My Tomtom seems to have been updated with the new limits not the new "zone de danger" areas.

The Halifax Clarity card is one of the cheapest ways of paying and drawing out cash however re the Sanef.co.uk Telepeage widget - it's given me many hours of my life back as not only does it make it easier to pay you frequently can bypass the big queues with separate lanes that you can drive through without stopping. Try getting through the toll booths on a busy day - I once made the mistake of driving up the A10 on the last Saturday of August.

The no of Crit-air zones is increasing and you don't always realise you are in one or when it is active :-www.crit-air.fr/en/information-about-the-critair-v...l

Edited by Big John on 30/09/2018 at 22:35

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Tue 2 Oct 2018 18:47
Driving in France - Crit Air - concrete

For this current fixation by the French on 'safety' cameras you can thank Mr Hollande or Mr Custard as the French called him, for good reason. He backed away from every confrontational poilcy he swore to implement in office, except one. You guessed it. Reduce road accidents and deaths or as it is normally known on both sides of the channel: a very lucrative exercise in revenue gathering. He realised after looking at our lot and the way they go about policing with 'safety' cameras that there is a lot of revenue to be gathered from the motorist of the world. Pure and simple. They were skint, and still are, so money raising became the order of the day. Road safety was simply a convenient disguise for this policy. Very cynical I know, but they are politicians after all said and done. They are their to help us, right!!!

Cheers Concrete

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Wed 17 Apr 2019 00:19
Driving in France - Crit Air - focussed

For this current fixation by the French on 'safety' cameras you can thank Mr Hollande or Mr Custard as the French called him, for good reason. He backed away from every confrontational poilcy he swore to implement in office, except one. You guessed it. Reduce road accidents and deaths or as it is normally known on both sides of the channel: a very lucrative exercise in revenue gathering. He realised after looking at our lot and the way they go about policing with 'safety' cameras that there is a lot of revenue to be gathered from the motorist of the world. Pure and simple. They were skint, and still are, so money raising became the order of the day. Road safety was simply a convenient disguise for this policy. Very cynical I know, but they are politicians after all said and done. They are their to help us, right!!!

Cheers Concrete

Since the demonstrations, riots and civil protests generated by the Gilet Jaunes protesters in late 2018 and ongoing in 2019, about 60% of french fixed speed cameras are out of action, vandalised, cremated, covered up, blown up, shot up by the hunters etc.

Amazingly, remembering the "speed kills" mantra - the figures for killed and seriously injured accidents have gone down since this occurred. A lot of the cameras were able to record speeds but not to record number plates. The speeds have gone up but the accidents have gone down.

Better to look at the road rather than the speedo?

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Tue 23 Apr 2019 22:49
Driving in France - Crit Air - Smileyman

Since the demonstrations, riots and civil protests generated by the Gilet Jaunes protesters in late 2018 and ongoing in 2019, about 60% of french fixed speed cameras are out of action, vandalised, cremated, covered up, blown up, shot up by the hunters etc.

Amazingly, remembering the "speed kills" mantra - the figures for killed and seriously injured accidents have gone down since this occurred. A lot of the cameras were able to record speeds but not to record number plates. The speeds have gone up but the accidents have gone down.

Better to look at the road rather than the speedo?

Don't tell the British road authorities, they are blinkered into top down control. so driving a little faster does reduce accidents and thus injuries / fatalities.

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Tue 16 Apr 2019 13:54
Driving in France - Crit Air - Bilboman

An update to Big John's article, if I may make so bold. Although the information on the Crit-air page is up to date and correct, beware the link at the bottom, which links straight to one of the rip-off scam sites.
A Crit-air sticker does NOT cost €29.65; the official cost is €3.11 plus postage. Official government website here: https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/en/demande-ext/cgu Bonne route!

Edited by Bilboman on 16/04/2019 at 13:56

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Tue 16 Apr 2019 21:24
Driving in France - Crit Air - Big John

An update to Big John's article, if I may make so bold. Although the information on the Crit-air page is up to date and correct, beware the link at the bottom, which links straight to one of the rip-off scam sites.
A Crit-air sticker does NOT cost €29.65; the official cost is €3.11 plus postage. Official government website here: https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/en/demande-ext/cgu Bonne route!

Indeed - Apologies I have posted the correct link elsewhere on HJ but not on this thread. I was only sharing the issue of positioning the sticker on a RHD car and the change in national speed limit. The site I linked to is useful to show where the Critair zones are. The rules and times are complex!

As you mention the site https://www.certificat-air.gouv.fr/en/ is the correct one and the one I used as well. Infact I've just had to do it again a couple of months ago as I've had a replacement windscreen and the old one didn't come off intact. As part of the application you have to scan in your v5 although beware the file size limit is low.

For information a non scam site link for the German environmental sticker which I've also used is :- https://www.berlin.de/labo/mobilitaet/kfz-zulassung/feinstaubplakette/shop.86595.en.php

PS The autoroute toll sanef widget site has changed to https://www.emovis-tag.co.uk/

Edited by Big John on 16/04/2019 at 22:16

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Wed 17 Apr 2019 14:31
Driving in France - Crit Air - colinh

On a related subject, if travelling via Madrid next week, be aware the LEZ (low emission zone) in the central area is fully active from next Wednesday, 24th April. Given the city has 3+ ring roads it's very easy to miss out the central area - so those just passing should have no problems.

Full details here:

http://urbanaccessregulations.eu/countries-mainmenu-147/spain/madrid-access-restriction

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Tue 23 Apr 2019 20:24
Driving in France - Crit Air - Bilboman

An annoying aspect to the various emission reduction zones now spreading across European cities is that there is no joined-up thinking: drivers of foreign registered cars can apply for the stickers in advance, but a sticker valid in one country is not valid in another. So much for European harmonisation, ahem. (MoT testing, insurance policies, post-Brexit IDPs, the list gets longer...) The truly cosmopolitan European traveller will soon have so many windscreen stickers for emissions, motorway access and the like (let's not forget the soon-to-reappear GB sticker!) that there will be no space left to boast "I've seen the lions at Longleat"!

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