This weekend marks the mid-point of the French winter school holidays, and that means tomorrow is one of the busiest days of the year on the roads as one third of the country goes back to school, another third goes on holiday, and the final third are in the middle of their two weeks off. Fittingly, as hordes of holiday makers head onto and off the slopes, in the region around the Alps Saturday is classed as black in a similar fashion to the way ski pistes are classified - green for no problem, black for scary...
It's not been a good week to be a motorist in general. Yesterday the government announced more measures to improve road safety - principally more cameras, which will be harder to spot than current models, and the introduction of average speed cameras in key places like tunnels. Since automatic speed cameras were introduced in France seven years ago, the number of deaths on French roads has dropped by more than 40%, though last year an average of 12 people per day still died. The aim of the new measures is to reduce annual road deaths to below 3000 by 2012.
Another bit of news yesterday that is likely to cause grief for motorists in France, was the threat to go on indefinite strike by petrol refinery workers, in support of the strike at six Total refineries, including the one just south of Lyon, and over worries about the future of the industry in France. There are apparently just 10 to 20 days worth of petrol stocked in France...
