“Awareness raising, planning, sanctions”: here are the three axes selected for the “street code” which will be voted on at the next Paris Council on Thursday, July 6. As Nicolas Nordman, deputy security officer at Paris City Hall, recalled, this new code “is not intended to create new rules but to restore their meaning. 20 Minutes reveals the main lines of the text, announced in January by the mayor, Anne Hidalgo and since then developed from the work of a citizens’ assembly.
The “street code” takes the form of 12 “essential rules”. These, in fact, are very similar to already existing articles of the traditional Highway Code: “Do not take your vehicle if drunk”, “Do not honk unless in immediate danger”, or “Park his vehicle only in authorized spaces.” “The street code is a prioritization of the rules that allow us to live together,” says Nicolas Nordman.
In particular, the implementation of a “bicycle passport” is planned. The objective is to strengthen the training of young people in cycling and the Highway Code, by generalizing to all schools the national program “knowing how to ride a bike”: this consists of 10 hours of training in intended for children aged 6 to 11, giving rise to the issuance of a “bicycle passport”. In addition, the town hall renews its objective of developing 100 streets with schools, in order to make them pedestrian, at least at the times of arrival and departure of students. In addition, offenses endangering children will be more systematically reported.
The new code is also accompanied by a strengthening of the resources allocated to the municipal police, which should operate “checks on all users”, specifies Nicolas Nordman. Officers will now be equipped with radar binoculars and sound level meters, which will allow them to better “combat excessive speed and road noise”. Sound level meters will also be a way of moving towards “the exclusion of large displacement motorized two-wheelers”. The videoverbalization capacities will be doubled.
A final objective is to make the sidewalks more secure, in particular to “give back their place to children and families with very young children or strollers in public spaces”, specifies the security assistant. For this, vehicles parking on the sidewalks will be more severely sanctioned and no more cycle lanes will be drawn on the sidewalks.
