With 38 deaths and more than 400 injured on the roads of Eure since the start of the year, figures up sharply compared to 2023, one would have thought that Alexandre Rassaërt, the president of the departmental council, would play the card of caution. However, it was the opposite reasoning that pushed him to announce at the start of the week that he was going to vote in February 2025 for a return to 90 km/h on all of the approximately 4,000 km of departmental roads for which he is responsible. charge: “We now have six years of hindsight on the measure and, what we see is that limiting the speed to 80 km/h does not work: the psychological shock did not occur for change the behavior of drivers and we have even noticed a significant increase in the number of injuries on the roads. »
He also compares the 38 deaths in 2024 to the figure for 2017, “the last year at 90 km/h, where we deplored 33 deaths over the whole year”. We will still have to wait until the beginning of 2026 for Eure to join the more than 50 departments to benefit from the relaxation on speed allowed by the mobility orientation law promulgated on December 26, 2019.
What Pauline Jouvenaux, the regional director of the Road Safety association, does not see favorably: “While the situation has deteriorated on the roads of Eure in 2024, we are a year away black, we decide to increase the speed? We're not going to be for it, that's for sure. » Supporting figures, she points out the consequences of an increase of 10 km/h in vehicles. “It increases the braking distance by 13 m, the length of a truck. This reduces the field of vision. And, schematically, the more the accident happens at a high or poorly adapted speed, the more serious the consequences: from a slight injury we go to a serious injury, from a serious injury we go to a death. “.
For her, it is more than likely that the departmental road safety commission, which must be contacted before the actual passage to 90 km/h, will issue an unfavorable opinion on this request. But it will only be advisory. And, above all, it will certainly not reflect the opinion of European drivers, as hoped by the departmental majority which launched an online petition in the wake of its announcement to bring grist to the mill of its leader: “What kills on the road is drugs, alcohol, drowsiness, the telephone and the excessive speeding of highway drivers,” say the elected officials from his group, who added “the car is the main means of mobility in Eure. While they do not guarantee better safety for users, 80 km/h above all encourages fines and users' fear of losing such a precious driving license.
So many arguments that Pauline Jouvenaux has already heard. “Lowering speed is never popular and it causes discontent among motorists. But the whole difficulty in road safety is to show what we avoid, the accidents that don't happen. If the 2024 results are not good in Eure, it is linked to multiple factors. And we will have to think about it. But increasing the speed means taking an additional risk,” she warns.
