BICLOU, EPISODE 42 - "I park where I want, and I ****** you".
“Even a cow puts down its dung better” these slogans, the cyclist and YouTubeur 50 Euros stick them on badly parked cars with colored stickers.
Under the mask and dark glasses, hides the face of Raphaël * who wishes to remain anonymous.
This Rouennais has given himself a mission: to defend the interests of cyclists on the road.
“I have no problem with the vast majority of motorists, they don't mean harm to us,” he explains.
"The problem is bad drivers, people who think they are alone on the road."
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In the middle of the lane facing the cars
This problem of badly parked cars, Nicole Bunel, 65, encounters it daily in her town of Argenteuil (95).
On a journey of about 3 km, filmed by Biclou's camera, Nicole encountered 25 motorized intruders on her bike path.
So, each time, the young retiree tries to have a dialogue with the motorists.
Passing a badly parked woman, she points out to him: "You see there is a car coming in front, well I'm in the middle of the lane".
"It's like that every day" replies another motorist.
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“Argenteuil is a city of around 114,000 inhabitants and it has a lot of progress to make in order to share public space better,” explains Nicole while pedaling.
For her, there are two explanations for these deviations from the highway code for motorized vehicles: unclear infrastructure and too little consideration for cyclists.
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“The cycle paths are delimited by discontinuous lanes and some motorists do not know that we are not allowed to park or even stop there,” she explains.
A solution ?
For Nicole, they should be painted green, in order to be more visible.
Punished by a fine of € 135
For the cyclist Youtubeur 50 Euros, this problem persists in the city because motorists are not sufficiently fined.
Near the Grands Boulevards, he is about to stick a sticker on a car parked on a coronapiste (temporary cycle path) when he sees a police officer on a motorcycle.
50 Euros then nods to him: "Please hello, is he verbalizable?"
The policeman answers yes.
“But I'm on a demonstration now so I can't verbalize it.
Call the district police station, they will arrange things for you, ”the agent explains to him.
Since 2015, parking on a cycle path or a pedestrian crossing is considered "very inconvenient parking" in the eyes of the law.
This offense is punishable by a 4th class fine, in the amount of 135 €.
According to figures from the town hall of Paris, verbalizations are more and more frequent.
In 2019, the number of tickets for traffic and parking on cycle paths increased by 46% compared to 2018 (53,467 tickets).
But 50 Euros him, has his method.
His little stickers, which he made himself, displaying slogans against badly parked cars.
"I campaign on the ground for people who do not dare to do it" he specifies.
“I think of all the people who walk in their neighborhood and have problems all the time on sidewalks and crosswalks”.
A little further on, a man on the first floor, intrigued by the noise made by 50 Euros around a badly parked car, also throws stickers at him through the window.
“He just threw GCUM (Parked Comme Une M ****) stickers at me,” says 50 Euros.
“Excellent!
It's magic, it falls from the sky ”.
Protect your track
Behind all these tensions on the road, there is above all the problem of a saturated city, with infrastructures that are not always very suitable.
The temporary cycle paths, built during the first deconfinement and called “coronapiste”, crystallize a lot of tensions.
Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle on the outskirts of La Défense, one of them posed many problems.
Very faded yellow paint, no physical demarcation, the cyclists who took it had to make their way between the cars that used the track to park.
So on February 11, 2021, Nicole Bunel and her fellow cycling activists from the association Mieux Se Move A Bicyclette, organized an operation "Protect your track".
The principle?
Create a human chain of cyclists all along the track to be visible and protect those who use it.
All in a joyful atmosphere.
Nicole congratulates those who travel by bike “Bravo!
Have a good day ".
These operations sometimes have very concrete consequences on the ground.
Because five days after the small event, the track received a new lick of paint, making it much more visible.
* The first name has been changed