Cars V Supermarket trolleys

[Ron Avery]

During the many hours of my life queuing at the checkouts at Carrefour,  Le Clerc and Hyper U, ( Motto: When there are  10 people in a queue we will consider opening another till) , I noticed that the French while pushing a supremarket trolley are quite happy to stand in a queue of 10+ people without getting annnoyed or impatient,  but put them behind the wheel of a car and they become the most impatient people on the planet.

They have to overtake.  They risk life and limb to overtake the car(s) in front, doesn't matter if it is round bends and over the brows of hills, they must pass the vehicle in front.  Yet you will find that them parked up in the next village going into a shop to get a paper or a baquette.

Is it just a case of C'est Francais

[Dick Smith]

That is only one type of French driver. You have omitted the old man who drives his electric car in your way at 10kph, the tractor with 2 small boys sitting on the mudguards and the two extremely fat ladies in the micro car almost stopping as it goes uphill because one of them is lighting a cigarette...

[Danny]

Compared to London we have found that drivers here (we are in 46) are just as impatient. What they seem to lack here is the aggression - they sit behind you (far too close...) waiting for a chance to overtake but there are none of the hand gestures, flashing lights, beeping horns etc. Indeed it seems to be the norm to drive really close to the car in front. In the UK I felt obliged to speed up or pull over to let people pass for fear they would pull out a gun at the next set of traffic lights, but here I stick to my guns and they overtake when they want to. And I don't drive a tractor, electric or micro car!

Jane

[Piprob]

And after he narrowly avoids running you off the road during a lunatic overtaking manoeuvre on a blind bend, up hill, in the dark, he becomes the eptome of safety consciousness whenever he passes through a village. Quite baffling.

[Pucette<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Pucette<FONT><P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">"Qui ne connaît pas la campagne lhiver, ne connaît pas la campagne et ne connaît pas]

Mmm, methinks safe from being done for speeding.

[Val_2]

Parking is no better either. Its a case of seeing how close they can get to the horodateur or exit. I couldn't believe it one morning when extremely early I had to park in the free car park in town which must hold 250 cars and there were just three of us near the entrance/exit in a row with me on the end. When I came back to the car half an hour later, a woman was waiting for me to pull out so she could hop into my space BUT there was no one else either next to me or anywhere else in the car park,it had to be seen to be believed. Old people who have never driven anywhere but the local village or countryside frighten me the most here and very often there is a case in the local paper where one has caused a bad accident by going onto the dual carriageway the wrong way or down a one way street in the wrong direction and don't get me started about roundabouts and giving way.

[opas]

Oh don`t! I drive a RHD and have done for years in France(on holls, before living here) without incident, until the other day , had Mr O as passenger and as we approached a roundabout, I suddenly became all confused! It wasn`t me...IT WAS NOT ME....a troisieme age person took the roundabout the wrong way!!!!!  luckily we missed one another , it had to be seen to be believed. Mrs O

[Val_2]

Oh I believe you allright. I've seen old people impatient at junctions so they go round past you onthe wrong side and then take the next turning on the wrong side of the white arrow as well. When we did a speed contrôle survey in our village last summer for the CMJ with the gendarmes, 98% of all cars stopped for speeding of well over 70kph in a 50kph zone were pensioners and boy did they get aggressive even though they were only mildly chastised by the law.

[Teamedup]

Supermarket queue's. Continent used to one of the worst for long queue's. Once, after seeing a couple of cashiers closing and no one replacing them, the queues were huge. I went and dumped all my stuff at the Acceuil desk and left. The girl there got stoprry and said I couldn't do that. I smiled sweetly and said that if they didn't want me to pay for my stuff, I didn't want it and off I went.

And it isn't only the old around here who will go around roundabouts the wrong way, the young do it too. A method of overtaking is they can't see anyone coming from the other direction, usually on the smaller roundabouts.