Driving La Bella Italia

[f.Channell]

Apres Ski in Zermatt. take the right trail and you end up in Italy!



F.

[Bill Glasheen]

You could apply for a job with the Italian police and drive this lamborghini.

I could see enjoying the organ transport part of the business. Who says speed kills? You'd be saving lives!

Non-professionals need not apply.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

And that is Paradise on earth...

[Van Canna]

Italian drivers are really a different breed…

You will never find an Italian driver dawdling in the fast lane.

The guy you see in the rear view mirror, out in the fast lane, usually in an Alfa Romeo, BMW, or Ferrari ...is often coming at you at about 110 or 115 mph, and he assumes you will pass that truck and get the heck back into the right hand lane, so he won't slow down much as he approaches.

Whenever you want to pass and before you pull out check your sideview mirror. If you see anything back there and you are doing less than 200 kph just wait a minute.
They are on you and up your tailpipe before you know it.

Most Americans don't know how to pass a vehicle on a freeway/autobahn. When you're passing the slower vehicle, you should be looking at the rear view mirror.

Once you see the front of that vehicle, immediately move back to the slow lane. You don't wonder, you don't wait.

There is a four-step protocol for passing and being passed.


• If you are passing, but intend to maintain speed, and return to the right (most of us), you should leave your left turn signal on until you are ready to return to the right when you change to your right turn signal.


• If you are traveling in the left lane, and intend to go as fast as your car allows, do not put on your turn signal.

• If you are in the left lane, approaching someone from behind who is going slower and you have no turn signal on, flash your lights at them. It is their responsibility to get out of your way and they will without a problem.

• If you are on the receiving end of one of these 'light horns', act quickly or you will get run over. This is particularly frightening when going through a tunnel on a bright day, you cannot see the lines on the road well and someone comes up from behind.

You should be in the left lane ONLY when passing another vehicle, not a second more.

If you find yourself in the left lane, saying going 150km/h passing a 90km/h truck, and there's a gap between that truck and the next one up. However, there's also a Porsche approaching at 250km/h behind you, flashing his headlights. What do you do?

You need to get in between those trucks, but you need to brake. Hard. Yes, you can go from 150km/h to 90km/h in no time, as long as you put your foot down on the brake pedal. Let the Porsche pass, then pull back into the left lane and floor your accelerator.

That's highway driving. Not a time to drink your coffee or read the paper

[dejsis]

That's highway driving. Not a time to drink your coffee or read the paper

.....and put your make up on, comb, shave and generally do your whole morning grooming routine right there behind the wheel.

[Van Canna]

.....and put your make up on, comb, shave and generally do your whole morning grooming routine right there behind the wheel.

While listening to La Boheme

[Bill Glasheen]

It's an entirely different mindset, isn't it Van?

It'll be interesting to see the degree to which individual European countries maintain their identities - or not - in the whole EU homogenization process. One thing I do know however is that even a homogenized European mindset is quite different from one we'd see on this side of the pond.

You go from place to place in this country however and you see attitudes change a lot. There's a New England mindset. There's a California mindset. there's a Mid-Atlantic mindset. There's a bible belt mindset. There's a Texas mindset. Etc., etc. It can be apparent right down to the laws passed about driving, speed limits, etc.

Bill

[Van Canna]

Italian Drivers: Reputation vs. Reality by Marilee Taussig

During my two week Untour to Tuscany in 2002, no one could have been more surprised than I to discover that I actually liked driving. This was shocking, given the fierce image of the Italian driver.


With the possible exception of the speed demons on the German autobahn, no European driver has a more wicked reputation than the Italian driver.

The reality that I experienced, however, is quite different: I would rather drive a week in Italy than ten minutes on the Schuylkill Expressway (nicknamed ‘sure-kill’) in my hometown of Philadelphia.


It is important to know that my sanguine impression of Italian drivers is based on virtually no city driving. We roamed all over the country hillsides of Tuscany for two weeks in our tiny compact car, a Dodo (the actual name for the make of the car), but by and large, I did no city driving in Italy.

I am not sure any sane American novice would attempt it. Untour staff are near geniuses at coaching Untourists on how to approach an Italian city: find the best outlying parking facility and enjoy it in the best manner possible; on foot.

Yes, the powerful Mercedes did tailgate me a little when my Dodo was insufficiently speedy while passing on a hill. But I did not begrudge them a moderate amount of muscle. After all, those drivers paid quite a lot of money for their vehicle, and lording it over a Dodo is modest pleasure to ask in return.

When I had to pass, I went as fast as I could and got out of the way as fast as I could (neither of which was very fast).

The reason I could cede the road so graciously is that, generally speaking, the Italians set a good example.

I drove in Italy for twelve days and was never honked at, never given a hand-gesture, and never even had lights flashed at me, all of which I merited several times over.

Italians merrily steered around me, hardly noticing my failings. In America, if I were driving behind someone as incompetent as I on Italian roads, I would positively be sitting on the horn.

My sense is that all in all, Italians don’t expect you to live up to lofty standards—on the roads and perhaps elsewhere as well. (I’ve not been here long enough to determine just how broad this blanket of tolerance is.)


Instead of the tight-fisted rush hour rage that we Americans are all too familiar with, there seems, instead, to be a warm, wry acceptance of their own flaws as well as those of their guests’.

In the face of folly, Italian drivers seem to give a good-natured shrug of the shoulders and get on with their business. One could have worse views of the world, either in or out of a car.

Marilee Taussig .....

**

Well one of the best reasons why Italy is called

'La Bella Italia'

[Van Canna]

There is a simple method of achieving the right state of mind for driving in Italy. Before you start your car for the first time, sit in the driver's seat, hold the steering wheel and think the following:

I am the only driver on the road and mine is the only car.
It may be hard to believe, especially after you have seen Rome during the first week of July or Milan during the rush hour, but millions of Italian drivers believe it and so can you.

An Italian driver's reaction to any encounter with another vehicle is, first, stunned disbelief, then outrage.

You don't have a chance unless you can match this faith. It isn't enough to say you are the only driver or to think it -- you've got to believe it. Remember, your car is the car -- all others are aberrations in the divine scheme.

[Van Canna]

In Italy, as elsewhere, there are laws about streets, maximum permissible speeds, which side of the street you can drive on, and so forth. In Italy, however, these laws exist only as tests of character and self-esteem.

Stopping at a stop sign, for example, is prima facia evidence that the driver is, if male, a cuckold or, if female, frigid.

Contrarily, driving through a stop sign is proof not that you are virile or fertile, but that you are a person of consequence.

This is why the Italian driver who gets a ticket gets red in the face, swears, wrings his hands and beats his forehead with his fists, and this is why people come out of nearby shops to snicker and point at him.

It isn't the fine, which is ridiculously low, nor the inconvenience -- for most offenses you simply pay the cop and he gives you a receipt -- but the implication that he is, after all, not quite important enough to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.

Remember, therefore, signs, laws and the commands of the traffic policemen are for the lowly and mean-spirited.

Every Italian's dearest desire is to be the exception to the rule -- any rule. The only place he can do it regularly is in his car.

[Van Canna]

The basic rule of driving in Italian cities is -- force your car as far as it will go into any opening in the traffic.

It is this rule which produces the famous Sicilian Four-Way Deadlock. Sharp study of this phenomenon suggests that the Deadlock or Degenerate can be broken if any one of the cars backs up.

That brings us to another important point about Italian driving. You can't back up. You can't because there is another car right behind you.

If you could back up, and did, you would become the object of ridicule, for backing up breaks the basic driving rule and suggests a want of spirit.

The impossibility of backing up accounts for some of the difficulty you will have in parking. Aside from the fact that there isn't anywhere to park, you will find that when you try to parallel park by stopping just beyond the vacant space and backing into it, you can't because that fellow is still right behind you, blowing his horn impatiently.

[Bill Glasheen]

Very revealing, my friend.

- Bill

[Van Canna]

You point at the parking place, make gestures indicating that you only want to park. He blows his horn.

You can give up and drive on or you can get out and go back and try to get him to let you park. This can be done by shouting Personal Abuse in the window of his car. One of these things will happen:

1. He may stare straight ahead and go on blowing his horn (if this happens, you're whipped, for no foreigner can out-bluff an Italian driver).

2. He may shout Personal Abuse back at you.

3. He may, especially in southern cities like Naples and Palermo, where honor is all-important, get out of his car and kill you.

[Van Canna]

The parking problem created by the backing up problem creates the Right Lane Horror. At no time should you drive in the right lane. One reason is that Italians usually drive head-first into parking spaces.

Thus, every third or fourth parked car has its tail-end sticking out into traffic, making the right lane a narrow winding lane.

Unfortunately, the center lane has its hazards, too -- the right lane drivers swerving in and out of the center lane as they steer around the sterns of half-parked and double-parked cars.

Double-parked cars run one to a block north of Rome and two to a block south of Rome.

Italians double park only in four lane streets. In six lane streets they triple park. Right lane driving is further complicated by the Italian style of entering a side street by driving halfway into the first lane of traffic and then looking.

[Van Canna]

The way to deal with Lane-Swervers and Cross-Creepers is to blow your horn and accelerate around them.

If you make a careful in-lane stop when your lane is invaded, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies, but you may never get moving again, since you also mark yourself as a weakling whom anyone can challenge with impunity.