Speed limits in France

The Code de la route also explicitly sets the 70 km/h speed limit for Paris' Boulevard Périphérique under this regulation.

This matches the way 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic defined a built-up area (in English, or agglomération in French).

Minimum or recommended speeds are very rarely marked in France, though vehicles incapable of sustaining 60 km/h are not allowed on highways/motorways and you must be driving at 80 km/h or higher to use the left-most lane of a highway/motorway.

[3] In some cities, 30 km/h is being developed as a common speed limit in zone 30 to provide greater security with pedestrian and cyclists.

In 2005, a governmental report advised lowering the higher highway speed to 115 km/h in order to save fuel and reduce accident risks, but this proposal was badly received.

Since 2002, the French government has installed a number of automatic radar guns on autoroutes, routes nationales, and other major thoroughfares.

On 9 January 2018 the national government announced 80 km/h (instead of 90) as a standard speed limit on secondary network, due to the many fatalities still happening on these roads.

The default speed limit changes still provided for single carriageway roads to remain 90 km/h for a certain direction of traffic, if it was catered for by more than one lane (ie.

By January 2019, then-interior minister Christophe Castaner suggested that as much as 60% of speed cameras were disabled; the government later stated that the figure had increased to as much as 80% at one point.

[8] After legislation passed in December 2019,[2] departments were authorised to re-introduce the 90 km/h speed limit to single carriageway roads not covered by the multiple-lane exemption.