Improving safety on our roads is a very important issue, but it sometimes creates grotesque situations.
This is the case in La Rochelle, where no less than seven stops have been installed on a street in order to reduce the speed of motorists.
A tobacconist who operates there says she has lost half her salary.
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The 1 p.m.
One stop, then a second, then a third… And so on. In La Rochelle (Charente-Maritime), avenue de Fétilly has no less than seven stop signs on one side and seven others on the other side in barely a kilometer, or 14 in total. Florence Martin-Duloz runs a tobacco shop on this street. Since September 2024, the date these panels were installed, this trader claims to have lost half of her salary. “I saw five clients today, so I have a margin of 4.55 euros. Before, I would have seen at least 20 or 25 customers at that time. But people don’t take the streets anymore, so it’s a bit as if I had been moved to the back of a dead end.”deplores Florence Martin-Duloz in the TF1 news report visible at the top of this article.
The installation of stop signs was decided by the neighborhood committee in April 2024. “There were a lot of us, maybe not all, but a lot of us were really worried about the speed of the cars which respected neither the right-wing priorities nor the 30 km/h limits,” explains James, a resident of La Rochelle.
A meeting in March
Other residents explain that to make traffic safer, only four stops would have been necessary. Our team has observed this on numerous occasions: with the number of stops to be made, quite a few drivers prefer to ignore the Highway Code. “You see that it doesn’t work that well, because motorists don’t even stop at the stop sign”declares Didier.
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Christophe Bertaud, deputy (various left) to the mayor of La Rochelle, defends the installation of these stop signs on Avenue de Fétilly, which was previously used by 5,000 vehicles per day. This street was considered too dangerous for pedestrians and for the increasing number of bicycles. “We are completely in the midst of changes in cities”he believes. A new public meeting will be held at the beginning of March in the neighborhood, at the end of which it will be decided whether or not to maintain the 14 stop signs.
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