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French driving habits

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Italians are well known for their anarchic and crazy driving habits, and anytime anyone tells me about it, I don't even make the effort to deny it because it is simply the truth. Italians (especially in the cities) are wild drivers and too often disrespectful of any driving rules (or common sense). The road is a jungle to us (I'm including myself only for nationality reasons)!

But, even if I find painful to share any charts' supremacy with the Frenchies (see our disputes about football!) I must admit that we are not alone on the top of the bad driving habits chart, as French drivers are not less undisciplined than us.

We've moved to Levallois Perret a few months ago; a wealthy residential area just out of Paris' peripherique. It's very quiet and in general a very nice banlieu to live in, but it took me not longer than a week or two to notice  that drivers are not that polite...

First, they park anywhere and anyhow out of the parking lines: on the pavements, at crossings, on the rump slopes at disabled crossing...






They drive quite fast, even in narrow roads. They gesticulate and swear against you (well...maybe not as much as Italians do...) and (what's most scary) unless there is a traffic light, they rarely stop at pedestrian crossings. And don't even try to tell them something...they'll scream at you!  

I'd like to point out that this is not a judgmental blog, but something I could not help to observe. Also I have to admit that traveling around France I didn't see anything like that, so this is probably a `Paris area` kind of issue.

 To support this theory (so that you know that I haven't got any preconceptions towards French driving habits) I would like to say that the pictures included in this post have been taking during a half an hour walk around the neighborhood.

So...faites attention! 

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