I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve led a safe life. I haven’t jumped out of a plane, or off anything with a bungee rope attached to my leg. I only have one tiny tattoo because I grew up being told by adults that if I wrote on my hand too much I’d end up with ink poisoning. And the closest I’ve come to reckless injury is the time I broke my little toe on an ornamental rock at my yoga studio.

But somehow, I become a little less cautious every time I visit France, a country with a slightly different attitude to rules and safety. As a French teacher and card-carrying Francophile, I have orchestrated my life to spend as much time here as I can. But it’s not the cheese or the wine that keep me coming back – it’s the people, who I’ve always found to be the perfect blend of sincere, generous and a little bit naughty. You only have to look at the way the Louvre thieves accessed a first-floor window during daylight opening hours to understand how brazen they can be when it comes to breaking the rules.

If you’ve spent time in France, you might have noticed a few things. For starters, bicycle helmets are far less common. You might even have witnessed a bare-headed cyclist hurtling towards you at a pedestrian crossing, politely yelling “Attention, Madame!” without bothering to slow down. In the Paris Métro, you might see some of the more daring locals jump over turnstiles to avoid paying a fare, sometimes with tiny dogs zipped inside their jackets. And until hefty fines were introduced for déjections canines (that’s dog poo to you and me), it was common for people to slip on them and injure themselves in spectacular fashion. I once had to throw out a pair of cotton shoes after stepping into a pile of dog faeces the size of a small birthday cake.

My first inkling that the French had a different relationship to safety was when I got into a taxi, aged 25, and noticed the older male driver giving me an odd look. “Is there a problem?” I asked, wondering what faux pas I could have committed in just 20 seconds. “We’re not going anywhere near a freeway, you know”, he laughed, pointing to my fastened seatbelt. Admittedly, this happened some time ago, but I doubt that taxi drivers in Australia were laughing at their passengers for wearing seatbelts this century.

The French attitude to safety spills over into matters of health, too. Although alcohol consumption is roughly the same in both countries, smoking rates in France are almost triple those of Australia. Recently, I was talking to a French friend about the ways in which the human body could break down, the risk factors for cancer, dementia and high blood pressure. “I’m not worried about smoking…” she said, as she inhaled her fourth or fifth cigarette of the evening, “…because, let’s face it – emotional stress is far more harmful.” Despite her total lack of medical knowledge, she delivered this opinion with the certainty of someone whose life’s work it had been to study the causes of chronic illness. I had to admire her conviction.

Sure there’s risky behaviour in Australia, but it’s frowned upon in a more overt way. And with good reason – no one wants their life cut short due to a devil-may-care approach to safety. Why is it, then, that I find risky behaviour so alluring? It wasn’t until fairly recently that I started to put the pieces together.

Last year, some friends and I went on a day trip to the Verdon Gorges in south-eastern France, led by a tour guide who doubled as our minivan driver. I was mortified to discover that many of the mountain roads the driver was taking were punctuated every so often by narrow single-lane tunnels. Had I been driving, I would have maybe, oh I don’t know, waited a few moments at the entrance to each tunnel to ensure no vehicles were coming from the other direction.

But our driver continued at the same break-neck speed, honking the horn to announce our impending arrival to oncoming traffic. I spent that morning with my hands over my eyes and a brick in my gut, thinking how much safer I’d be if I’d just stayed in Nice doing Wordle and eating pastries.

But after a few hours of silent bargaining with various gods and other ethereal beings, I had a realisation: I was not in control and never would be. No amount of wincing or shallow breathing was going to save me from tumbling down the side of a mountain, so I began to breathe out a little. My hands even stopped shaking long enough to allow me to take some photos, which would later serve as evidence of my bravery for those who know me as the giant baby and rabid risk avoider that I am.

That night when I returned to my accommodation, I raised a large glass of life-shortening champagne to the universe, my maker, the matrix – whoever’s running the show – for seeing to it that I lived another day.

French-born writer Anaïs Nin once wrote that “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage”, a phrase I sometimes like to repeat to myself whenever I do something that scares me. It’s such a perfect mantra in fact that I might even get it tattooed on my arm one day. Once I overcome my fear of ink poisoning, that is.

Julia Pound is a high school teacher from Melbourne.

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