Dangerous goods

The second entry is la classe de danger, and on a tank plate the noun does exactly what an English reader expects of it: it names a peril and it decides which rules the load travels under. Spoken French then takes the same noun and turns it inside out. Pas de danger, left standing on its own, is not the reassurance it looks like. It is a refusal, and the nearest English is « not a chance ». Pas de danger qu’il arrive à l’heure says that he will certainly not be on time, and pas de danger que je recommence says the speaker has no intention of trying again. The pattern is fixed: no article in front, que behind, and the verb in the subjunctive after it. Two things follow. Reading the phrase as « there is no danger that he will be late » keeps the facts and loses the speaker, because the idiom is dismissive where the literal rendering is soothing. And the idiom belongs to speech alone, so on a placard, in a regulation and everywhere in this list, danger keeps its plain weight and the two uses never meet on the page.