Red lines on French motorways: the route of fake news

For several days now, false information concerning the appearance of a red line on French motorways has received widespread media coverage, even ending up on the website of our colleagues at Le Parisien . The Parisian newspaper reprinted an article from the specialist website Auto Plus published on May 14, announcing that a red line of approximately four kilometers had appeared on the A7 motorway between Lyon and Marseille . Articles in other media also indicated that a similar section had been put in place on the A10 towards Bordeaux.

These publications specify that this red stripe, drawn parallel to a white line, is intended to alert drivers in particularly accident-prone areas. They explain that crossing this line is punishable by a fine of 135 euros, which can be increased to 750 euros, as well as the deduction of three points from the driving license.

To lend credence to this information, several media outlets have provided specific details on the implementation of this system. Some articles mention, for example, that this initiative is being led by Autoroutes du Sud de la France (ASF), a subsidiary of Vinci Autoroutes , with an experimental phase that, if successful, could be extended on a larger scale across the French motorway network. Le Dauphiné Libéré even interviewed a lawyer to comment on this measure. Everything is gathered to reinforce the plausibility of this fact in the eyes of readers.

Except that... the information is false, Vinci Autoroute confirms to Le Figaro . "This supposed red line had already appeared on the web last October, and we had already denied its existence," specifies the motorway concessionaire. The only red line that actually existed is in Spain, on the four-kilometer section of the A-355 in Malaga, specifies an on-site report from the television channel RTVE. The initiative was led by the Regional Government of Andalusia, in collaboration with the Spanish Directorate General of Traffic (DGT), which also installed four educational radars to measure drivers' speed. Six months after these installations, the results demonstrate a total success in terms of road safety: serious accidents have decreased by 30% on this section of road.

In short, it is surprising, to say the least, that this 4 km stretch of Spanish land has been teleported onto the A7 motorway between Lyon and Marseille.