On this page
Driving France is run by Westcountry Travel Media, a family company based in the South West of England. We’ve been driving our own car in France for over 20 years, and we built this site to be the guide we wished we’d had: every rule a British driver needs, checked against official sources and dated.
Who we are
We’re a small family company. The guides are written and checked by Tim, who has driven in France for more than two decades, on family holidays and long drives alike. Tim was also one of the founding owners of GoCampFrance.co.uk, which specialised in camping holidays in France, so getting British families across the Channel and driving in France has been part of his working life as well as his holidays.
We also run Book a Ferry to France, our guide to every ferry and Eurotunnel crossing, and guides to the ferries to Spain.
First-hand experience
Where our own experience helps, we share it, always labelled as “Tim’s tip” and in Tim’s own words. That includes being given an on-the-spot fine for not stopping fully at a STOP sign on a slip road, breaking down on a bank holiday weekend near St Nazaire, using a toll tag on long autoroute drives, and waiting two weeks for a Crit’Air sticker to arrive. You’ll find these tips throughout the guides, starting with our 25 tips for driving in France.
How we research and check every page
- Official sources first. French rules, fines and limits come from Service-Public (the French government’s official guide), the Code de la route, Sécurité Routière and other French government sites. UK rules, such as licences, trailers and pets, come from GOV.UK.
- If we can’t check it, we leave it out. We don’t repeat figures from other websites or AI search answers without checking them, and we’d rather say “check before you go” than guess.
- Our own data. Drive times and distances in our route planner come from OpenStreetMap routing, calculated for every port and destination, so comparisons are like for like.
- Every page is dated. Each guide shows when it was last checked. French rules change, so we recheck pages regularly.
- We write it ourselves. Our pages are written in our own words, not copied from other sites or from companies we work with.
Read the full details in our editorial policy.
How the site is funded
Driving France is free to use. Some links earn us a commission if you buy or book through them, such as links to Amazon for driving kit and to Europcar for car hire, at no extra cost to you. That pays for the time it takes to research the site and keep it up to date. It never changes what the rules say. Read more in how we make money.
Contact us
Questions, corrections or ideas for the site? Send us a message and we’ll get back to you. We can’t give legal advice or deal with fines on your behalf.