I know where you're coming from, but the white line thing is all about Health and Safety and the proper Safety Legislation - we work to it, the French don't.
We have different views to the French. In France the hold ups are minor and kept to a minimum so people respect the limits and controls meaning less issues.
Over here, we go OTT. Traffic gets held up for no reason. Roadwork's go on for months/years with no noticeable work going on which makes people get pissed off with the roadwork's in general.
If we sped things up, cleared down temporary limits when not needed and generally did things better, drivers wouldn't get so frustrated and less issues would occur.
I'm definitely not trying to disagree here, but there is more to it than just "culture" - we have roughly the same number of people living over here as they do in France (give or take a few), but our island is 1/3 of the size of France. They also have a road network that's 3 times a big as ours, but with car ownership levels within around 10% of each other.
Therefore, on any given day, the traffic density on the roads in France is going to be 1/3 that of the UK.
Think about it, we have 3 times as many vehicles per mile travelling on our roads than the French do. Is it any wonder that there seem to be less road works and less traffic jams over there.
The traffic damage is the other reason French roadworks take less time than ours - because their traffic volumes are light, they can get away with regular "quick skims" and thin surface replacements, which can be done much quicker than our deep structural repairs. During the 90's we started to adopt French road surface materials and construction techniques, and then decided to reduce our maintenance regimes to save money - is it any wonder we're in the mess we are in now.
Unfortunately, I've been in the Highways industry for 40 years now, so I have a pretty protectionist view of our roads and working methods, but having spent time in Europe, the USA and Central America with work, I don't think my views are misplaced. In the long run, given our traffic density, we still have just about the best and the safest road network in the world (just imagine how France would compare if we took 2/3 of the vehicle's off our roads!).
It's just that our island is waaaaay too small for our population.