Drivers' anger is a powder keg in France

With petrol prices rising and tougher driving measures being introduced – from expanded 30km/h zones to new AI-equipped speed cameras – could France see a return of the anger that fuelled the gilets jaunes protests?

Politics and sociology expert Christian Le Bart, from Sciences Po Rennes, said “there is a great deal of attention and tension surrounding the plight of motorists today”.

“What is interesting is that the world of motoring has become a key focus of public debate,” he said. 

“Historically, political protest was linked to workers, social class or feminism etc. Here we have something different – the accumulation of discontent linked to the condition of being a motorist.”

He noted that the car was long seen as a symbol of freedom, especially for middle-class families and young people. 

Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once said “individual freedom began with ownership of a motor vehicle”.

However, attitudes have changed due to concerns over pollution and road deaths.

“A number of measures are now being proposed which are perceived as restricting the residual freedom people still have with the car,” Prof Le Bart said.

French motorists have historically complained about measures such as seatbelts and speed limits, he added, but the current context is different.

“What is actually new today is that we do have a whole series of restrictions. Restrictions in a context of, obviously, a very sharp rise in petrol prices.

“There’s an expression that sums it up well – motorists as ‘cash cows’.”

Certain politicians on the far-right have also played this card, he said.

Prof Le Bart said anger over driving costs and restrictions was a major factor behind the gilets jaunes movement of 2018-19, which he said transcended the left-right divide.

“It brought together people who simply used their cars to get to work,” he said.

He pointed particularly to families pushed out of expensive cities into suburban or rural areas where they became dependent on two cars and regular fuel spending.

He also said many people felt policies were being devised by urban elites disconnected from daily life outside large cities.

“It’s a new divide,” he said. “The urban bourgeois, particularly Parisians, who use public transport and are indifferent to petrol prices, versus peripheral France, rural France, which needs the car every day and feels sacrificed.”

However, he believes today’s measures are unlikely, on their own, to trigger a nationwide movement similar to the gilets jaunes because many are local rather than national decisions.

“What could really set the powder keg alight would be a symbolic national decision,” he said.

He was also sceptical that stricter penalties for mobile phone use while driving would provoke major unrest.

“There is a safety argument here which resonates with public opinion,” he said. “You can’t really defend the right to use a mobile while driving.”

Prof Le Bart added that wider frustrations over digitalisation are also fuelling public resentment, citing difficulties accessing services online or contacting public bodies by phone.

“Many people feel a sense of loss, of regression, of reduced convenience in their dealings with public and private institutions,” he said.

But he noted that turning individual ‘grumbling’ into a large-scale social movement is always unpredictable.