The little Indian who has become the essential travel companion for those who travel by car is celebrating his 48th birthday this year.
“Bison Futé sees red this weekend in the direction of departures”. Like swallows and spring, the pupil of Bison Futé has announced for almost 50 years the great departures on vacation. But why is Bison Futé called Bison Futé? Who had the idea for its creation? How does it work ? We take stock of our vacation companion. Something to occupy your car journeys on Saturday July 8, which Bison Futé has classified as red.
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VGE and a monster plug
We are on August 2, 1975, and France is experiencing the worst traffic jam record in its history: 600 km of slowdown. The RN10 which joins Paris to Spain is transformed into hell for motorists: it is saturated over a quarter of its length. Between the heat wave and the accidents, 145 people died on the road that weekend.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing will then ask his Minister of Equipment to find a solution. A few weeks later, Jean Poulit, engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées, takes the head of the road operations and safety department with an idea: setting up an information system that would make it possible to create road maps and determine alternate routes.
Bison Clever against the Timothy bird
Behind Bison Futé is actually the Cnir, the National Road Information Center. But very quickly, the idea of finding a mascot to embody traffic information and distribute it to as many people as possible was essential. The bird Timothée and the giraffe Ginette hold the rope, symbolizing the possibility of seeing far. A lively and fast dolphin is also mentioned for a time, but it is finally the cunning Bison smart who is chosen.
It was not until 1983 that a color code was established for the forecasts: green for an accumulation of traffic jams of less than 150 km, orange between 150 and 350 km of traffic jams, red between 350 and 600 and the very dreaded black beyond 600 km of traffic jams.
On June 27, 1976, he appeared on the radio for the first time, on France Inter, and invited motorists to “follow his green arrows”. And from the summer of 1976, it was a success: the alternative routes were marked out, the traffic jams decreased.
The first appearance of Bison Futé on the radio in June 1976
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How does Bison Futé develop its forecasts?
The Cnir brings together staff from the police, the gendarmerie and the Ministry of Transport. The service relies on motorway companies and on a particularly effective network of sensors placed under the roadway and cameras. Bison Futé compiles this data, and processes it to produce one-year forecasts, which are then refined according to the weather, the planned work and the schedule.
Obviously, in fifty years, and with the development of new technologies, the paper maps of Bison Futé’s alternative routes were abandoned in 2003 and replaced by a website. Later, an application, coupled with the development of real-time information technology. Originally planned for the summer, Bison Futé now works all year round and indicates in 17 major cities and on motorways traffic and events that have an impact on traffic: works, demonstrations, accidents, road closures…