“Two cars forced me to jump into the ditch”: In Lias, in Gers, local residents exasperated by speeding

It’s 5 p.m. Workers rush to return home for the weekend. Eager to use the quickest route, several motorists, guided by their GPS, frequently take the shortcut of the Fontenilles road. Road which passes through the small Gers commune of Lias, on the borders of Gers.

In the town, the speed limit is set at 50 km/h, as required by law when passing through town. But, being on a straight line, the limit is very rarely respected, making this road a permanent danger. On October 15, two accidents already took place in the town. If the first’s investigation has not yet confirmed excessive speed, the second has definitely drawn attention to the dangerousness of this road.

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GPS shortcut, speeding… Exasperated local residents demand safer roads

On the path leading to Lias, you can see homemade signposts. All indicate the limit: 50 km/h, yet the cars go at more than 70 km/h for the most part. As best they can, residents try to protect pedestrians and children going to the school bus stop.

“It’s like it’s worthless.”

In Lias, local residents are exasperated. “With my house located on a bend, I dread the day when a car, going at full speed, ends up skidding into our house, it has become a nightmare,” says a Liassois resident. Having lived in the town for 15 years, he is now at his wits’ end, wondering if moving would not be the only solution, “from living with this constant fear.”

“I have seen the speed of cars increase alarmingly in recent years. Before, motorists were more respectful, but today it has become a real circuit,” we are told. Already, a local resident has lost two cats, “because of speeding”. “The worst part was that one morning, a car ran over our cat in the middle of the road at 9 a.m. The person didn’t even bother to put him aside. It’s like It wasn’t worth anything.”

One runner even risked her life. “I was running on the road to Fontenilles when two cars came at high speed and crossed at my level, literally forcing me to jump into the ditch.”

“300,000 euros to try to make people slow down”

For Mayor Gérard Paul, this is too much. “The roads being narrow, when we pass each other we have to slow down, something that people don’t do, he explains. I see it every day on Lias, they are afraid to take the shoulders because they going too fast.”

For the elected official, the roads, in particular those departmental 534 and 535, are not calibrated for too high a speed. And expanding them would represent too great a cost for a small town of 800 inhabitants. “With the community, we had a study carried out by the department’s roads service and the measures to secure the hamlets would cost 300,000 euros to try to get people to slow down, but it’s catastrophic.”

The problem comes, according to the mayor, from the advent of GPS, and in particular the Waze application, which would send users to Lias. “The accident that happened last week, people were coming from Fonsorbes to go to L’Isle-Jourdain. Going through Lias is not a classic route. Even if it makes it shorter. I’ve been living there for 45 years in Lias, I have never seen that, there are so many vehicles since the GPS.”

For the moment, the municipality is planning to install temporary arrangements worth 60,000 euros “to see if people respect the locks (allowing two separate traffic lanes to be reduced into one, Editor’s note) that we should do. It will be deliberate and we should be able to do it very quickly, but I am scandalized and outraged by this lack of civility,” insists the elected official, claiming to be afraid on the road.