The figure sparked criticism from the Association nationale des Victimes de la Route, whose president Raymond Schintgen said that the new government’s policy of reducing fines for minor speeding offences sent the wrong message. Schintgen even suggested that fines for traffic offences could be linked to the guilty driver’s income.

But Paul Hammelmann, president of road safety lobby group Sécurité Routière, told RTL that while deaths were a “catastrophe”, the numbers were not of the critical mass that any scientific lessons could be learned. “They don’t necessarily say anything about the conditions of our roads, and above all they say nothing about government policy over the last five years. In our view, that policy has been the right one.”