The flashing of headlights, a practice no longer so common
A majority of motorists flash their headlights very little or not at all after passing a police check.
12/11/2021
A majority of motorists make no or very few flashes of headlights after having crossed a police checkpoint.
Flashing the headlights after crossing the police is a well-known practice… but not so widely used. This is one of the elements found in a "survey on the relationship to the rule among French motorists", carried out by IFSTTAR and Cerema in 2018 but the results of which have been published recently.
The study was conducted on a representative sample of 1,000 French motorists, who answered a long questionnaire on their behavior at the wheel. And among the many results, we retained this rather surprising aspect: the call of headlights is not popular.
To the question "When I pass near a traffic control, I warn oncoming users by flashing the headlights...", only 9.3% of respondents say they always do so and 19.1% will do so often. On the other hand, 20.3% are not going to do it much… and 33.1% never do it! This therefore gives a majority of people who make few or no headlight calls.
If it does not please the police and gendarmes, the practice is not prohibited and is therefore not a source of fines. The study does not go further on this specific aspect, and will not give the reasons for the choices of motorists. One can imagine the perverse aspect of some, who really want the others to be trapped! But we also think of those who practice the call for 21st century headlights: signaling control over connected objects and applications, Waze and Coyote in the lead!