Driving In France As A Foreigner (With A Foreign Car)

Driving in France is usually chill, but there are some things to know and also do before you start driving in France. 

As a road trip enthusiast, I always make sure to research the country I’m planning to drive in, to make sure I have all documentation in order and everything is registered. 

This needs to be done about 2 weeks in advance, as some situations might take a while to get done. All the tips about driving in France are for normal cars (M1). 

What am I talking about? Let me explain.

Update: This France leg is part of a longer Romania to UK road trip I’m currently documenting.

The essentials of driving in France

France, like the rest of continental Europe, had right-hand driving, and normal cars have a wheel on the left.

I’m putting this out there because many of the tourists visiting France come from the United Kingdom, which has the opposite driving rule (obviously, they drive on the wrong side of the road in the UK, but it’s too late for them now to change). 

Needless to say, you also have to make sure all your documentation is in order (insurance and all that). I would also strongly urge you to get roaming or buy an eSIM using the Airalo app – code NEWTOAIRALO15 for 15% off – (to have internet connectivity at all times) and use Waze on your phone to try to detect speed cameras.

By the way, if you’re going to Paris and want to visit the Louvre, don’t drive there; it will be a huge hassle.

French roads can be divided into multiple categories, but what they all have in common is signs. 

There are so many signs, long names for places and temporary announcements, that it will be confusing and your brain will take a time to adjust to all the new signs. This took me days, and sometimes I was filtering out some of the signs, unfortunately some were essential signs. But there are so many, that it can be confusing to someone who is used driving in countries with less signs. 

This remark about signs on roads in France comes from someone who has driven in over 20 countries in Europe and a few on other continents.

I, without false modesty, am an excellent driver and managed to drive without a scratch in countries like Guatemala or Italy. But somehow, it bugs me to see so many signs in France. 

Some road signs in France don’t make sense in my humble opinion.

For instance, you are on a motorway, where the limit is 110 km/h. So you put the autopilot on and then just admire the fields, because there is nobody else on the road (this is a bit of a joke, of course, you need to keep an eye on the road). 

Then, in some bush, there is a sign that the maximum velocity is 90 km/h. This makes no sense because the highway conditions don’t change. And the sign might not be visible to you, since the bush or tree in front of it covers it almost completely. 

So you don’t see the sign and continue driving, as if nothing happened. 

Then you see a violent flash. In an instant, you realise that was the flash from the stationary radar that just took a picture of you. 

You now realise there was a 90 km/h sign just 300 meters before that, that you obviously completely ignored. 

Nothing can be done; the radar is automatic, and there is nobody else on the road. 

That is driving in France for you, in a nutshell. 

Driving limits in France

Drive slowly, especially when unsure. An average speed of 80 km/h should be fine in most situations. 

After driving in France for more than a month, I am still surprised to see all sorts of limits, which might be connected to the state of the road, which might seem unusual to foreigners.

For instance, legal limits can change from 30 to 40 to 50 to 70 km/h in villages and towns. Seriously, there are signs with all of these. 

Then, in between villages and on motorways, expect signs for 70, 80, 90, 100 and 110 km/h. Some motorways allow 130 km/h, but I spent most of my time on the coastline, driving between villages, so I haven’t really enjoyed the pleasure of driving at 130km/h. 

Luckily, there weren’t many speed cameras between the coastal towns, and I was able to enjoy the north Brittany road trip itinerary better, without having this to stress me.

Road tolls in France

There is no road toll in France in the general sense that you need to purchase something like a vignette before entering the country. 

The electronic vignette (which usually needs to be purchased online before even driving in the country still applies in countries like Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania and others – always research this when driving to a new country in Europe. But France doesn’t have an electronic vignette. 

Instead, France makes you pay for driving on most of its highways. They have a ticket system. This means you drive towards the highway, and just before you enter the highway, there’s a ticket booth where you need to stop and get a ticket. 

You then continue your road, and when you exit the highway, another booth will be there, and you will insert your ticket, and the machine will ask you for a sum of money, according to the total distance travelled. It’s usually something like 1 euro for 10 km. 

At this point, you wish France had a vignette, but they like money. 

During high season, I found that one of the highways from Paris towards Normandy had closed its highway booths, and a sign was posted asking drivers to pay for the highway online on the SANEF website. A very smart system they have there; they knew I had passed by. 

The system allows for payment within 72 hours after passing. However, I only remembered about 5 days later, and it still allowed me to pay, even though I was late.  

Important if you’re driving in big cities: The low-emission zone sticker

France, like other important European nations, decided that cars create pollution and help deteriorate the quality of air in larger cities. 

That’s why they introduced a special “clean air” sticker, which needs to be stuck to your windshield (bottom left as you’re looking at the car from outside). 

In France, this sticker is called Crit’Air, and they come in numbers according to the engine on your car. The best sticker is Crit’Air 1 (green) and the worst is Crit’Air 6 (grey). 

Countries such as Spain and Germany have a very similar sticker system, but of course, they can’t be correlated, and if you plan on driving in all these countries, you need the right sticker in each. 

However, you don’t necessarily need a Crit’Air sticker in France if you are not planning on driving in the big cities. This sticker is only needed to enter the low-emission zones of bigger cities, and you can find the complete list of Crit’Air low-emission zones in France here. 

In France, the low-emission zones are called ZFE zones. 

If you don’t have a sticker and enter one of these zones in the cities of France that have low-emission zones, you can get a ticket (it was about 68 euros last time I checked). However, there isn’t (yet!) an automated system to issue tickets for the lack of a sticker. 

So in order to get a ticket, a police officer needs to see your car parked (or maybe while driving), stop you and issue a ticket. 

The French websites I consulted aren’t clear in that regard, so I can only assume. 

For instance, I don’t have the sticker, and I drove to Rouen centre, which enforces such a low-emission zone. There were probably signs about it, but I was busy trying to navigate through other signs and to actually drive the car. 

I parked there, and then some hours later, I drove out of the city. To this day, no parking ticket has been sent to my home, which is in another EU country (I’m from Romania). I’ll update this post if I ever get a fine from Rouen for trespassing in the low-emission zone without a sticker. 

I would also be insulted because I have the corresponding sticker on my car, but from Germany. As I said, it’s basically the same thing, but I guess France and Germany still don’t want to collaborate (old feuds die hard). 

To get the now-famous low-emission zone sticker for France, as a foreign car from the EU space, you need to order the sticker online here and allow about 2 weeks to get it via mail at home. 

Why make things easy when they can be so complicated? At least in Germany, you can go and buy the sticker and get it on the spot. 

Traffic fines in France (including speed cameras aka radars)

I have never seen so many signs and traps to “help” you get tickets anywhere else as I do in France. This place is on a mission to add more funds to its budget from traffic fines, especially those from speed cameras.

The entire system seems so developed, from how to get more people to drive a bit over the limit, to the thousands of radars (speed cameras) and more gimmicks. 

So, inevitably (although I hope you escape it), when you receive the ticket from the French authorities, you need to pay it promptly, because if not, the amount increases, and they will somehow pursue you (not physically) in most cases, and eventually they will get their money. So, just get it done with and quickly. 

You need to have a notice of the fine to be able to pay it online. For instance, if you get a speeding ticket from a stationary radar, as I did, you need to wait for it to arrive in your mail, in your home country, where the vehicle is registered.

Update about speeding fines in France

About 1 week after I originally wrote this post, I got not one, but two speeding tickets in my home mail. Those were not the tickets I was expecting.

The first one was from my second day in France, for driving 83 km/h (thinking 90 is the limit) in an area with a 70km/h limit.

This was during my second day in France, when I was staying in Lille (which, by the way, has plenty of things to do for a day) and decided to do a little afternoon trip to Dunkirk.

The second one was about 10 days later; I was driving 127 km/h (because I thought the limit was 130 km/h) in an area where the limit was 110 km/h. Each one was 45 Euros, if paid within 46 days since the date of the notice.

The next step, with the fine in hand, is to go to this website and pay it. On the back of each fine, there is a pre-formatted pay slip, with all the details needed to fill in the online form to identify the fine and be able to pay it. There’s a code (Numéro de télépaiement) and a key (Cle) that are unique to your fine, so don’t get it wrong.

It takes 5 days from the moment the camera caught you speeding until the notice is issued, but it then took more than 2 weeks to be delivered to my home country, which is also in the EU. Because I just left France a few days ago, I still expect to receive other speeding tickets.

The issue with these fines from speeding cameras isn’t just the money; they also collect points from your driver’s license. I don’t know about your country, but in the EU, if you get 12 penalty points on your driver’s licence, your licence gets suspended for a few months.

Of course, there’s another French website where they tell you how many points they give you for each such penalty. Read all about the penalty points here.

At this point, driving in France has been the most expensive road trip in Europe in terms of road tolls and fines. And I have been to all European countries and driven in half of them.

My review of driving in France

Most drivers in France are very considerate, and nobody is trying to bully you to make you drive faster. I find that a lot of the elderly population still uses a car, and they are usually very mindful and drive a bit slowly. 

There are also new drivers (beginner drivers) on the road, but they have a big sign on the back of the car, which is a white circle with an “A” on it. You will notice it once you see it. 

Most parking is paid, and you can use apps like Flowbird or EasyPark to pay online. But even the parking can be complicated, for instance, in the touristy places outside cities, the parking is free most of the year, except during summer, which is considered the high season, and then you have to pay. 

Note that campers and bigger cars need to be parked in special parking spaces, because not all parking spots allow campers.

Also, a lot of the parking spots, even the free ones, are specifically designed for cars with a height of up to 2 meters (some only have 1.9m). This applies in cities, but also for parking at nature spots.  

As you see, there are so many rules for driving in France that it’s hard even to explain them to someone who has never seen the things I’m talking about. 

I made this guide about driving in France for normal cars, because all the resources on the internet are confusing, the (many!!) French websites about traffic regulations are also too many to research and understand (just like their signs on the roads), and I want to make it easier for you.