France approves Ripps Law: graduated car licence by power

France approves the Ripps Law: car licence tiered by power

Is the days of getting your licence and buying a 300-horsepower car over? France has just made its move. On 21 July, the French Parliament passed what is known as the Ripps Law, which brings the car licence in line with the graduated system used for motorcycles: new drivers would first have to go through a low-power category and wait two or three years before accessing higher-displacement models. The penalties, they warn, range from fines to jail time.

What is the Ripps Law and who does it affect?

The law, a first in Europe, does not specify in the published texts the exact horsepower cut-off. The comparison with the motorcycle licence says a lot: there, the A2 category limits power and, after a period of time, riders move up to the A category. For cars, the question is where to draw the line. If it were set at 95 hp, a large share of today's compact cars would be excluded, as they already exceed 110 hp without breaking a sweat. A headache for families with an ordinary second-hand hatchback.

Safety or control?

The argument underpinning the measure is youth road accidents and the pogre licensing approach, which already works for motorcycles. On the other side, critics point out that illegal street races are not staged by Porsches or 300-hp cars, but by old, cheap vehicles that have been remapped; punishing the average driver with yet another licence, more bureaucracy and more fees has little to do with preventing them. Behind it all looms the shadow of an industrial agenda: if available power is reduced, the low-power electric car gains ground. According to figures circulating at the time, the registration tax on a Toyota Yaris in France was around 80,000 euros, a figure that makes you wonder where the country's automotive policy is headed.

The law's big loophole: electric cars

A Tesla Model 3 already puts out around 300 hp and a Model S exceeds 700; the Model S Plaid goes from 0 to 100 km/h in 1.99 seconds. Classifying electric motors by horsepower, where power is cheap and easy to deliver, turns the law into a sieve: either you ban part of the electric line-up, which is precisely the one you want to promote, or the restriction becomes a dead letter. Meanwhile, those who already hold their licence are laughing, and those coming up behind are bracing for yet another bureaucratic twist.

How much power does the state allow us to drive? The Ripps Law doesn't say, but analyses of the whole picture suggest that, under this model, the answer will never be too much. After all, road safety has become the argument that never fails to justify decisions that are not all that safe either.