Vive la difference!
by Graham Smith

Freelance journalist Graham Smith, of Mediaworld, ponders the perils of
driving ‘en France’.

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It is alleged that the French drive on the right. If you are going there this year forget it, they don’t. They drive in the middle, they drive too fast, they drive on the left if it’s more convenient, they drive on the pavement, in short they drove me insane!

When you reach a certain age you slow down by a good few miles an hour.

Your reactions are a little slower than Damon Hill’s, you prefer the rubber on the tyres too on the road and if you have just eaten a little French cuisine you would ideally like to digest it peacefully rather than see it again because some barmpot in a flying Fiat thinks he is late for the French Grand Prix.

Thinking that I could hack it with the best of them I decided to hire a left-hand drive car for a recent trip. Seemed reasonable to be sitting on the same side of the car as the natives and it would surely feel more natural driving on the right hand side of the road.

You get in and immediately feel disorientated. You wind the window down every time you want to change gear and when you try and wind the window down you lurch into second and end up with a nose end view of the windscreen as a passing Frenchman casts aspersions on your parentage, or at least I think that’s what he said.

The pedals are in the same order as over here but only one matters to a French driver, the accelerator. Most of them hang a Gauloise out of the corner of their mouth, an arm out of the window and anchor the pedal down with a large brick to keep them at a constant speed of at least 70 miles an hour, and that’s only going round corners.

I was staying in the beautiful foothills of the Luberon mountains. The morning peace and tranquility was broken only by the call of a cuckoo, a cicada on its way to bed and a gurgling coffee maker until… vrooooom. crunch, scream, beeep, the nearest local lunatic sets off for his baguette in a haze of smoke, a stench of rubber and puts the car in every gear all at the same time to see which one will get him there quickest.

Eventually after several coffees, three aspirins and a Valium I felt ready to venture into the nearest village. The track leading from the cottage was not too bad.

No other vehicles and the road beyond sounded deserted.

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