Paris Driving

The best advice I could give you about driving in Paris is Don’t ! for many many reasons, mostly having to do with Parisian drivers.
The Parisians, like most French people, think rules are there to be broken. This creates a terrible situation : the more there are rules introduced to regulate trafic, the more Parisians are motivated to break them !
Driving in Paris means that you have to have faith in your luck, but especially be very very alert. Pedestrians think nothing of jumping into the street to take over other pedestrians on the sidewalk, or to cross when the little man is red if they even cross on pedestrian crossings (most likely not).
You also have to be very alert of other drivers who would probably think that you’re driving too slow (even when you’re well over the speed limit) and will toot their horns to push you (and yet, when they have to stop somewhere, they think nothing of stopping and blocking everyone and curse you for honking after waiting a reasonable amount of time). Don’t speed even when you don’t see any police around, there are discrete radars everywhere and you will receive a letter stating when and how much over the speed limit you were driving …

The golden rule that everyone has to respect is to give way to your right : This may mean that even in a big round about you have to give way to cars coming in from your right (unless it is specified that those already in the round about have priority). So, when you’re circling the Arc de Triomphe you will have to stop for those coming in from the zillion avenues that end up in this round about !
In intersections you have to learn to be patient, it’s likely to be disorganized. In the US and Australia, people wait until the intersection is clear before they move forward and cross the intersection, even if the light was green. Not here. As soon as the light was about to change to red (or probably already changed to red), everyone pushes into the intersection and consequently blocks everyone else who now has a green light, resulting in a huge honking and cursing mess. There doesn’t seem to be a rule that the intersection has to be clear before one enters it, as we have at least in California.

Many Paris avenues now have bus lanes that could be used by buses and taxis. No private passenger cars or motorcycles should be on these lanes. But, if motor cyclists have no qualm of riding on the sidewalk, you can bet they have no qualm whatsoever zipping in the restricted bus lanes.
Streets found in older quarters of Paris tend to be narrow (just wide enough for one car, eg. in Le Marais or in Montmartre).Consequently, they tend to be one way and you may have to circle around to get anywhere. Be careful on these narrow streets as, in many of them, bicycles are allowed to go against the (car) trafic.

As many have said, best to see Paris on foot, or by bus or by métro….or of course by the wonderful Velib (hired) bicycles that could be found everywhere in Paris (see my entry on Velib).