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I am enjoying my second six week stay this year in Puglia, in the southern ‘heel’ of Italy.
There is one aspect of every day life here that a newcomer simply can’t escape noticing – the driving. Most of us have probably heard references to Italian driving, but having now had the opportunity to study it (mainly from the passenger seat), in the city of Lecce for a couple of months, I have recognised that governing the apparent chaos are a very universally accepted set of rules.
Firstly, it is absolutely vital to arrive at any possible encounter with a fellow motorist or indeed pedestrian at the highest attainable speed. One drives with the blissful assumption that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else using the roads at the same time as you. This belief is rudely and abruptly shattered at every street corner, roundabout, side-street and pedestrian crossing that one encounters – violent braking is required. I am investigating the cost of establishing a Repco franchise here even as I write this.
The second rule is that, on no account must one allow another driver any sort of advantage, certainly not if they have indisputably the right of way, or wish to come out of a side street and you are stopped in traffic anyway. Unless they intrude a part of their car into the way of your vehicle so that an accident is the only result if you don’t give way, they get nothin’ from you by way of courtesy.
The same goes for pedestrians….even when they are on pedestrian crossings, which happens occasionally by accident (seasoned pedestrians cross whenever and wherever they like). If, on a pedestrian crossing, the would-be ‘crosser’ is no more than three or four paces onto the marked area and there is the barest space to get past them without hitting them, then it’s a done deal.
Roundabouts, of which there are plenty, are the purest game of bluff I’ve seen. If one is on the inside and need to get off, you just steer for the exit and cut across the traffic. The other cars will either reluctantly let you pass or arrogantly drive across your bows causing you to lose that contest only to take it up with the car behind them.
Strangely, it is rare to hear an angry car horn, and I have yet to witness an accident. There appears to be no road rage here at all – if you lose the contest you accept with complete grace and move on to the next encounter. Another thing that must be stressed, is that to drive like this requires extraordinary awareness. Even when it rains, the locals seem to make no allowance for the changed conditions.
Out on the open road, it’s on for young and old. I have noticed that they do actually have speed signs with numbers on them. What I have not observed is anyone taking the slightest notice of them or anyone’s speed even approximately matching the numbers on the signs we just passed. This is doubly scary at first, as because I’m from Australia, everything happens on the opposite side of the road to the one I’m used to travelling on.
As petrol is substantially more expensive here than in Australia, there are many more ‘small’ cars here than at home. There are however, quite a number of larger cars of the BMW and Audi style or the locally produced Fiats and the French Renaults etc. So whilst we are tootling along in my girlfriend’s little Fiat Panda at a spanking 130 to 140 k’s per hour, one or more of these larger machines will come from way behind and whistle past at a speed that makes us look as though we’re running on the spot…..170?…180? …wouldn’t like to hazard a guess.
One does occasionally see a Carabinieri (local police) vehicle pull someone over (about once every three weeks or so) whereupon my girlfriend (a local) expresses the opinion that they “must have been bored”, either that or they ..”just felt like being macho” for a few minutes. Sometimes on the way to the little coastal town of Castro, where we spend our weekends, a Carabinieri with flashing lights, closely followed by a big black car will hurtle past, giving rise to “..some politician on his way to his weekend holiday house.” There is no rancor here, just a feeling of…if you can get it, do it.
I have discussed this subject a couple of times (only with folk not born here – a real Italian wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what I was on about), actually only with women who married Italians, one of whom, a Jewish girl from New York told me that for the first year or so when she drove anywhere, it took half a day even if she just went down to the shops, as she got stuck in side streets giving way to everyone. At this point I should confess that for the first month I was here this year, I never got behind the wheel.
I had, before I got here, driven right across the South of France on auto routes (freeways) and I admit, at one stage I glanced down at the speedo and was surprised to see I was doing 160 kph …..and I was just keeping up with the traffic! But that was tame by comparison to here and I was in a late model, beautiful little rented Peugeot.
Getting back to ‘pedestria’ with which I have become quite familiar here, I can imagine being stuck on the side of the street for hours wanting to cross, if you don’t understand the rules. This would be only because you were obeying a very basic human rule: self preservation.
To get across the street here, often across two lanes of traffic – each lane trying to beat the other lane into a roundabout – you have to step out in front of that racing traffic! I liken it to the Harry Potter books, where to get onto the platform for Hogwarts school, you have to walk straight at the barrier between two platforms and believe you’ll get through.
It takes a bit of guts to do it, but my breakthrough came when I observed a little old lady, laden with shopping bags, walk straight out in front of two lanes of maniacal drivers – the outer lane going faster than the inner one – and she didn’t look at them but just the road in front of her…and they stopped and she walked through not only unscathed, but unperturbed. I have tried it….it works..… takes a bit of guts though and I’m still working on the unperturbed bit.
Copyright © 2009 Stewart Faichney
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