The number of cars burned during the transition from 2014 to 2015 dropped by about 12 percent compared to last year. Speaking at a press conference held in Paris, Valls attributed the decline to the record-breaking 90,000 law enforcement officers that patrolled major cities across the country from 6:00 pm on December 31st to 6:00 am on January 1st.
Burning cars on New Year’s Eve (and on July 14th, France’s national holiday) started in the early 1990s as a form of protest in deprived neighborhoods but it quickly morphed into a contest between a number of the country’s regions. Youth that typically live on the outskirts of major cities such as Paris, Strasbourg, Marseilles and Toulouse take to the streets each year to see who can cause the most mayhem.
France’s previous government stopped reporting the number of cars burned on New Year’s Eve in order to put an end to the contest but the measure did little to quell the annual unrest.
To complicate the situation, some motorists take advantage of petty regional rivalries to commit insurance fraud. Government sources indicate that about 20 to 30 percent of the cars that burn in the early hours of January 1st are set on fire by their owner.
Although 940 cars burned in one night is a sobering statistic, it pales in comparison to the roughly 40,000 cars that go up in flames in France each year.
Photo by Ronan Glon.
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