-
Map: where in France is highest fail rate for cars in road safety tests?
A majority of vehicles on French roads are over 10 years old
-
Tested for you: Google’s free AI personalised French lessons
The ‘experimental’ Little Language Lessons platform generates exercises and vocab guides - but failed to woo our writer
-
Roads to avoid in France this holiday weekend
Traffic is set to peak on Sunday as people return from their long weekend
Look, no hands! Fancy test-driving an autonomous car?
Self-driving car technology development continues at speed

French car manufacturer PSA Group has become the first in the country to be granted official authorization to carry out testing of autonomous cars on public French roads, using ‘non-expert’ drivers.
The group, which owns Citroën and Peugeot, will begin testing in March on about 2,000km of French roads – with its own customers behind the wheel.
Since July 2015, professionally trained drivers have driven some 120,000km of Europe’s roads in PSA prototypes.
The group said in a statement that by 2020, some of its vehicles “will benefit from autonomous driving features enabling the driver to give the car full control”.
Competition to develop autonomous driving software is fierce in the car-making industry worldwide.
Stay informed:
Sign up to our free weekly e-newsletter
Subscribe to access all our online articles and receive our printed monthly newspaper The Connexion at your home. News analysis, features and practical help for English-speakers in France
In September 2016, Chinese-owned Swedish manufacturer Volvo teamed up with auto safety group Autoliv to develop driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous drive (AD) systems, and also teamed up with Uber in a 300million deal to develop driverless cars. Volvo expect AD technology to be ready by 2021.