If you have a driver’s license, you should know the meaning of road signs: there are many of them on the sides of our roads, and it is not always easy to remember them… But here road sign unusual that may have caught your attention.

The sign is already out of date

This square-shaped panel is an indication panel, framed by a blue frame, all on a white background: we see a black truck accompanied by an icon of a green leaf, on which there is a dashed line, which means a road. In the rules of the road, it contains a number type CE51.
You may have seen this road sign on your route before, but know that it is very rare. In fact, it is a sign that is now obsoleteas it indicates the presence of hardware that never saw the light of day: ecotax distribution network points.
If you’re familiar with this term, it was actually talked about and a lot of ink was spilled about a decade ago:eco tax for heavy trucks was to come into effect in 2014, and “eco-tax points” were to allow truck drivers to obtain an “Ecomouv Pass”, a special electronic device that allows them to collect this new “eco-tax”.

The contested eco-tax, then it was abandoned

When this system was introduced, there were few more than 400 ecotax points in France, located in strategic locations near the country’s borders or along highways, as well as in areas frequented by heavy goods vehicles. This panel began to be installed on the roads of France since 2013but was never actually used.
Indeed, road users and HGV drivers strongly opposed the HGV tax, and we particularly remember the “Red Hats” protest movement in Brittany, with numerous damage to ecotax limits which allows you to control the movement of trucks weighing more than 3.5 tons.
Environmental tax on heavy vehicles has finally appeared discontinued in the fall of 2014 Ségolène Royal, then Minister of Ecology. This whole story will cost the French state more than a billion euros, and today – these Panels CE51 are the last witnesses of this stormy era. Some of them can still be found on the side of the road, but they are gone no function.

However, a new decree published on December 31 outlines the contoursa new tax on heavy vehicles, which now resembles the one abandoned ten years ago. So the eco tax may return in the coming years, be careful as this time it should be applied to fares…