Just got our “Important Pre-travel Information” guff from Eurotunnel.

It says:

On 1 July 2012, a new legislation came into force in France. All drivers of a motorised land vehicle, excluding mopeds, must possess a digital breathalyser or an unused (and immediately available) breathalyser kit which conforms to NF standards. This rule equally applies to vehicles registered outside France. Only vehicles fitted with Breathalyser Interlocks are excluded. Failure to carry a breathalyser in your vehicle will NOT incur a fine.

😕

Oh and sorry, I know it’s been asked before. 😳

Get one, then do what we did and use it as an opportunity to see what you could drink and still be legal to drive (whilst not being stupid enough to actually drive of course).

Answer for me? 4 glasses of wine and 2 G&Ts: still legal? My wife? 3 wines: still legal. Both of us three sheets to the wind.

Bought ours from amazon when we went ski-ing.

I live here…not a legal necessity yet.

4 glasses of wine and 2 G&Ts: still legal?

Giddafeckouttahere!!

I’d be destroyed on your missus’s let alone yours!

DD, it was horrific. There was no guarantee I could ride a bike down my garden path safely, let alone drive. 😯

Not sure why it needs to be nailed down really.

Just get a couple and chuck them in the glovebox, sorted.

Why worry about wether its in force yet, or what the fines will/wont be.

just get them and have done with it. It’s not like they are expensive or difficult to store is it.

Now now neal, no need to get fighty wighty. 😛

It’s just the “you must have one” but “you will not be fined” if you don’t. Just can’t be doing with the massive confusion this causes me. 😐

I’m just not sure why it matters that’s all.

It seems like it is a law which currently has a fine of €0 for non compliance ?
That will change some time though no doubt.

It will also signify an immediate failure of the “attitude test” though obviously.

And that could be expensive/ time consuming.

That’s more like it. 🙂

You’re correct of course…I have two breathalysers.

Somewhere.

**** knows where though. 😳

You have to have one but there’s no fine for not having one.

Google translate makes it read like Yoda wrote that

Some of us don’t need google translate.

Thanks for the link Edukator. I’ll have a read later. FWIW, what do you and Madame do? Ignore it or comply?

£4 for a pair on amazon. I’ve just bought a pair to chuck in the truck. 3 weeks tomorrow and its Brittany here we come 🙂

I’m only shooting through on the way to Ze Fatherland. 😐

Going to lay some more wood?

😆

No mate. This holiday is in part payment for the wood laying in September. Off to a farm in the Black Forest. Can’t bloody wait. New motor for the road trip as well. Woo!!

I have the free one sent by my insurance company in the glove box. They’re 1e40 at the Leader Price check out.

Have you got your E4 sticker for Germany? You’ll find you can’t get into most towns without one.

Umweltplakette E4

Do you have to carry a hi viz as well?

Sounds good – is this a new motor to accommodate all dd junior’s gear?
2 weeks in a caravan by the sea for us – taking the body board and the road bike. Might even catch a stage of Le Tour!

Yep, hiviz, one each, and spare bulbs as well.

geoffj – Member
£4 for a pair on amazon. I’ve just bought a pair to chuck in the truck. 3 weeks tomorrow and its Brittany here we come
POSTED 28 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Us too. Fingers crossed we keep the weather we have now

£5 from Halfords. Added to the under seat storage compartment for “rubbish I need to drive in France”. No further worrying.

spare bulbs as well.

Don’t forget the spare headlight bulbs, which are impossible to change at the roadside on most modern French* cars.

* also a problem on other cars, but it’s ironic that French cars seem to be the worst culprits.

BigG where you off to? We’re going here – http://www.campingporsperon.com/brittanycamping.html

Everyone said those breathalyser jobbies will be €1. No they’re not – they’re more like €3-4 each and come in packs of 2. Even when the fine was not going to be €0 it would be about the cost of 3 breathalysers. And since they put a use by date on them to make you need to buy 2 new ones every 2 years… I’ll take the risk tyvm.

Don’t need the German sticker “for most German towns”… DO need one for a handful of (albeit typically large) towns, most of which most visitors won’t visit. And of those they might on a stopover to Austria, the Ibis/Etap/F1 hotel will most likely be outside the zone.

Spare bulb are worth it though. And a screwdriver to change them. And an Android/iOS tablet with 3G roaming to google the intawebz to find out how the heck you dismantle all the bits of plastic to access the bulb.

We were driving through France last year so decided to buy a set of the breathalysers just in case.

There were also warnings at the time that you could be fined if your satnav had the locations of french speed cameras in it, so I also updated my satnav so that those were replaced with “safety zones” or some such which were ok. Not that we were likely to be doing much speeding as we were in a motorhome!

Visiting the Black Forest without spending a day in solar city E4 Freiburg would be a pity.

Visiting the Black Forest without spending a day in solar city E4 Freiburg would be a pity.

We visited Freiburg on a previous trip. It is indeed a lovely place.

We carried one on our road trip purely to avoid any unnecessary hassle with the law.

Everyone said those breathalyser jobbies will be €1. No they’re not – they’re more like €3-4 each and come in packs of 2. Even when the fine was not going to be €0 it would be about the cost of 3 breathalysers. And since they put a use by date on them to make you need to buy 2 new ones every 2 years… I’ll take the risk tyvm.

A return trip to the south of France is going to cost what? Say £150 in fuel and the same again in tolls. Add another £100 for the ferry and that’s £400.

So a breathalyser kit is less than 1% of your travel costs.

(and not really needed) 😉

€12 fine (for when they were going to have fines, but never got around to enforcing) is bog all compared to that round trip either.

€0 is 0% of the total cost 🙂

In my case it would have been €7 for a return trip between Geneva airport and Morzine, and one return trip between Calais and the Belgian border, which is then quite a significant % especially when there is 0% chance of actually getting fined 😉

I believe they are going to start getting much stricter on the E4 stickers soon, including in Darmstadt. I don’t know how that will affect foreign registered cars.

ps Andy, is it you who is joining us on the Morzine trip in July?

not me – went there last year (Flow MTB)

And yep heard that Darmstadt has supposedly been forced to become one of the towns needing a sticker, rather than doing their own thing for no cost. (edit: I’d heard “not before Jan 2014”, but that was not definite)

Still it’s only a one-off few euros for a sticker here, unlike the (iirc) €14 for non-residents, which is one helluva fee to pay for 1 trip in to Freiburg or wherever, in addition to probably expensive parking.

No one I know in France has one, even though they are anal about carrying documents/Hi Viz jackets etc. I’m certainly not going to bother.