Confusing road signs

Some road work was done at the end of my street here in Saint Jean de Sixt a few weeks ago. Luckily, the French road workers put up some signs to help the locals with the diversion.

French roadwork sign La Clusaz

Go left or go right — do whatever you like really. How French!

My only question is: why bother with either sign?

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About

I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.

6 Comments on “Confusing road signs

  1. Ha Ha, I love French road works. I used to be a training officer teaching UK road workers on how to ‘sign, light and guard’. You can imagine UK health, safety and street work rules were quite ‘prescriptive’. However…. gotta say, French road works and their signage is never ‘text book’ but they just sort of work.
    I think it ties in with the fact that when Frenchies are in a car, they don’t expect everything to be ‘regimented’.
    It’s maybe a laissaz-faire thing, but fair play.

    • Indeed. Take the 50km/h roadwork sign in a 90km/h stretch, where a few traffic cones are placed but nobody is around and there’s no sign of any actual roadwork. Nobody slows down.

    • Also, I do love the way that, when I run the flashing orange light at roadworks to avoid waiting another three minutes to get through, I’m surprised to see the car behind me run it as well. And then the next car, and the next car, blatantly going through the ‘stop’ light. As you say, it’s maybe a laissez-faire thing.

  2. Thank you! I am French living in UK for now. I love your blog! You are my type of girl and reading how you see my home country is so true and refreshing! keep going! laure x

  3. With a blind and narrow bend in our village They have just installed a temp. roadsign with the two arrows giving ‘priority ‘to the traffic going one way. But there is not a paired sign the other side showing that the oncoming traffic has that priority. Oops!