And you thought Irelands DCs were dangerous??

Chris_533976

Was in France a few weeks ago and travelled on the A40 from Cluses to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and back.

Officially, the A40 ends just before the road heads up into the mountain, only because the road is not motorway quality. The road is infact dual up to the Mont Blanc tunnel, save for a small bit of S2 near Chamonix that is being upgraded.

Travelling along the A40 towards Chamonix -













At one point, just at the end of the A40, the road bears left and must travel up into a valley.

Going uphill is fine, you go up this very impressive and quite new viaduct (wonder if anyone on here has more info about it??).





Impressive view of Mont Blanc at the top -





Coming down is another story. The viaduct is D2, and only carries uphill traffic. From what I can gather, the old road (both sides of it) is used as the downhill way. This leads to a downright dangerous (with a low speed limit) windy D2. Its quite an experience to drive it.







Best shown in a video, you can see the uphill traffic on the viaduct too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoKi_kHaLSo

Then the road runs directly into the A40 "Autoroute Blanche" which takes us back to Cluses (and further). No wonder its not labelled A40 up to Chamonix!!!

godtabh

Where is the dangerous part?

Alun

kearnsr wrote:

Where is the dangerous part?

I was wondering the same thing as it happens. It's bendy, so what? It's pretty obvious it's bendy, and from what I saw there's a 70km/h limit on it. It seems to be well maintained and well signposted too, so what's the problem. I've driven on autobahns, albeit quite old and obscure ones, in Germany that weren't much bendier than that.

SickCert

So nice photos there.

Most your pictures are of straight roads with no apparent dangers.:eek:

RadioCity

I'd love to drive on those roads! Lots of nice scenery too!

corktina

id say its a lot safer than when ti used to be two way...I guess the camera car was keeping to the limits as there were a lot of overtakers...mad french drivers i guess....id love to take my Cortrina down there (or up there if theyd let me....even the new uphill bit looks a thrill and a half...

E92

I'd say the fact that French Autoroutes have a dry speed limit of 130 km/h and there is all that stunning scenery to look at makes it dangerous!


Actually, even though I've never driven on them, I think that the French Autoroutes that I've been on aren't even half the standards that our old DCs would be. They certainly are not as good as our HQDCs/Motorways, yet they have a higher speed limit.

If 130 is safe enough on those type of roads, then surley 140 or even 150 is safe enough for ours?

And don't tell me about the poor standard of Irish Driving, I know we have that problem, but bad driving and speeding are 99% of the time totally unrelated(unless while driving badly you happen to be speeding).

If we had more Guards out enforcing the rules of the road(other than speeding, that seems to be the only rule they ever enforce), then people might and its a big might just improve somewhat their standard of driving.

kleefarr

Those roads look LOVELY!!

testicle

I can assure you that that road, from Chamonix towards Geneva is quite windy, and there's a bastard of a speed camera just before a bridge on it. This is the only camera on the entire road, in either direction.

Stark

Chris_533976 wrote:

And you thought Irelands DCs were dangerous??

We did?