Badly placed or too high… Speed ​​bumps, a French madness

France was the land of the baguette and the Basque beret . Today, it is the nation of roundabouts and speed bumps. When will this stop? A recent ruling by the Council of State is an opportunity to look into this very French habit . Their proliferation has ended up wearing on the nerves of many drivers who suspect that these speed bumps on every street corner are only there to supplement the income of road construction companies. Poorly placed or too high, they are increasingly the cause of serious accidents for motorcyclists and cyclists, material damage to cars and their shock absorbers, and noise pollution for neighbors who have to endure the braking and roaring restart of engines. Anti-car associations argue that "the game is worth the candle." But comparative studies on the causes of accidents in France and in countries which do not use speed bumps (none of which use them to this extent) do not demonstrate their effectiveness.

The Association for Peaceful and Sustainable Mobility is convinced of this, and has become the specialist in litigation against local authorities who abuse the sleeping policeman. "In the Var, under our pressure, some municipalities have destroyed all the speed bumps, and since then we have not seen any accidents attributable to their absence," Thierry Modolo, spokesperson for the Association, tells us. He believes that one of the causes of accidents is rather "the poor condition of the roads, which are less and less maintained." He mentions "potholes, damaged barriers, worn or slippery roads." He reminds us of this, citing a study that can be found on the website (https://www.unionroutiere.fr/): "In 2012, France was still number one in the world for road quality, and in 2018, it had dropped to eighteenth place."

The Association therefore turned to the Council of State in the hope that the supreme judge of administrative disputes would conclude that all speed bumps were illegal... illegal. The latter did not go that far, but its refusal to rule is already an admission. "Its decision leaves it up to the judges of first instance to assess the situation on a case-by-case basis," explains Maître Josseaume, the association's lawyer and specialist in road law. This opens the way to countless disputes over poorly placed or poorly sized speed bumps. "Each town hall is being referred to its responsibility," summarizes Josseaume. "In 2022, a ruling by the Marseille Administrative Court concluded that the construction of speed bumps had to comply with the 1994 decree that authorises them," explains the association's lawyer, Rémy Josseaume, "but the Court did not conclude that all old speed bumps that fall outside these criteria had to be destroyed."

Three-quarters of the speed bumps built are illegal: either their structure is not good, or they are outside a traffic zone under 30 km/h

Thierry Modolo, spokesperson for the Association for Peaceful and Sustainable Mobility

This caution was intended to avoid a national controversy over a multi-billion euro waste, because most speed bumps do not meet the very restrictive criteria of the 1994 decree: "Three-quarters of the speed bumps built are illegal: either their structure is not good, or they are outside a traffic zone at less than 30 km/h," summarizes Thierry Modolo. "The speed bump is also a problem for the Samu when it transports a sick person, for the firefighters when they have to slow down and restart several times on a route, etc.," he adds.

The 1995 decree authorized their construction, at a minimum. Then a state agency, Cerema ( Centre for Studies and Expertise on Risks, the Environment, Mobility and Planning ), took over. It had to justify its purpose. It therefore published a guide on speed bumps which was in reality "an aid to circumventing the decree" , observes Josseaume. The rest of the story is known. Local political cronyism is everywhere, and elected officials are human like any other. To please a few concerned citizens, and to protect themselves from liability in the event of an accident, they prefer to cover their cities with speed bumps. Poorly identified urban objects, with changing shapes and heights, are multiplying like hotcakes: there are trapezoidal shapes, crossing platforms, Berlin cushions. There are more than 470,000 of them in the 36,000 municipalities of France. "In total, it will have cost the taxpayer ten billion, and removing them would cost between five and seven billion," says Thierry Modolo. Proof that the problem has reached deep within, the very liberal David Lisnard, known for his fight against bureaucracy, supports the proliferation of these bituminous turgidities. "He is also president of the Association of Mayors of France and mayor of Cannes, and he has many in his commune," says Thierry Modolo, who lives in the same department. We now know how speed bumps have infiltrated our road landscape as stowaways. But we don't know if we'll be able to get rid of them.