I am genuinely at a loss as to how someone riding within the bounds of reason could find themselves in a situation where a french policeman would scroll through their GPS to see if it warned of speed traps.
I don't think the regular police are trained, or for that allowed by law, to 'interrogate' your GPS. There are apparently bods for their equivalent of the DOT who are trained and empowered to check them though. Reputed to hang out at ports and pull over the unwary for inspection, though this is just hearsay. The proposed €1500 fine is steep so I wouldn't bother risking having relevant data on your Garmin. Not sure if they would levy that the first time around but wouldn't want to test the theory.
I got stopped once in 2010 in the Alps, the bike cops that pulled us over were polite but linguistically challenged when it can to dealing with two Brits who pretended to not understand them particularly well
In the end they gave us a breathalyser test each. And I mean that they gave us a kit to use ourselves at a later juncture... We tested them at the campsite that evening after a few beers
Flipfly said:
Personally I love riding through France (although the first hour or so is a bit tedious). Never had any problems with the Police, always found people warm and friendly, far more so than over here.
The attitude to bikes, let alone their fabulous and relatively empty roads, food etc. are what keep me going back year after year. Keeping it sensible on the Autoroute but across the boring bit of Northern France is a wise idea. Frequently have seen police cars hidden from long distance view with a Gendarme armed with a speed camera. Having said that the traffic on the opposing carriageway usually gives you ample warning.
Once you're off the Autoroute, which we tend to do in the Champagne region, the regular N and D roads can generally be ridden in an entertaining manner without bursting the speed limit by any significant margin anyway.
Was 'zapped' by a speed camera armed Gendarme in the Vosges in later June this year, he was hiding in the shadows of a wooden bus shelter on a long straight bit of road. I doubt if I was, of the other other 4 bikes in our group following me were, over 90kph by very much. He didn't bother giving chase so he was probably after a more significant catch. None of the others in the group registered his presence.
I removed all the Garmin alerts, as I had disabled them anyway. They're files in /Garmin/POI/ with the word Cyclops in the name. i.e. FranceCyclopsSample.gpi just copy these to you PC and delete from the GPS.
Pocket GPS World data just requires you to opt out of French data when you download an update. Purge all existing PGPSW data before updating to ensure that it's clean.
I prefer to go with any warnings when abroad and just use the Mk1 eyeball and a dose of common sense.
