They are beginning to clamp down (there was major policy shift in France about 10 years ago now I suppose) and get increasingly automated and inter-connected. Same thing going on everywhere really.
Travel Insurance - YES ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!!! I went to Italy last September for my 'trip of a life-time' to the Ducati Museum. I was unfortunate enough to have a low-speed tumble on some loose gravel on a mountain hair-pin on the way back to my campsite. Bike was virtually undamaged but I had come down directly on my left shoulder resulting in three cracked ribs and all my shoulder girdle muscles torn. Lying in the back of an ambulance I remember thinking - well I wonder what £20-worth of travel insurance is going to get me? Well, I can't tell you how glad I was to have bought it - they paid for a hotel, taxi's from the hospital to the hotel and back again the next day to see a consultant, taxi's to and from the airports (posh ones too - Merc 4x4 and Audi A8!) with a fluent English-speaking driver on the Italian leg of the trip and the repatriation flight home. Back in the UK I was driven direct to my front door. The cost of my ferry ticket was reimbursed too the entire outward bound and return journey! Not sure how I would have managed on my own with my limited Italian - my Emergency case manager took care of everything. My excess was only £75 . . . bargain! My separate breakdown cover eventually repatriated my bike about 3-weeks later. Thoroughly recommend this company Cheap Travel Insurance & Holiday Insurance | Direct Travel , for the small cost to cover a single-trip it's just not worth quibbling about, you just never know . . . . Oh, and the Italian people were all wonderfully kind and helpful, really going out of their way. If the worst happens, I really believe that most people around the world really are kind and helpful at heart and will do their best to help a traveler in need. Just remember, what goes around comes around though - be prepared to do your bit next time you see someone in trouble . . .
