“Gladiatorial Driving” – By Scott Reitz

Recently we had the pleasure of doing training in France, Italy and Greece. We spent about three weeks there and for most of the trip, we rented a car. This might be the eye opening part of a trip to anyone new to driving through certain parts of Europe. There is driving and then… there is an alternate universe of driving. For instance, there is commuter driving, race car driving, off road driving, test driving and probably many other forms of driving which I’m not even aware of. There is also a rather unique form of driving indigenous to one and only one place on earth.

Italy is a beautiful country. The people are warm and the wine is good. The Mediterranean Sea is an aqua marine blue and the terraced hillsides rising high above the waters are alive with fig, olive, lemon and fruit trees. Italy is also… well… Italy and they have a most peculiar form of driving like no other. It is just shy of a death sport in my opinion. For instance, let’s take the subject of following distances. Most schools of thought ascribe to about one car length of distance for every 10 miles an hour relative to speed which seems perfectly reasonable. Not so for the Italians. Here’s what I figured out over there. At 30 kilometers per hour (roughly 18 mph) the follow distance is approximately 1 foot or 12 inches. No kidding. At 60 klm per hour (37 mph) the follow distance greatly expands to approximately 2 feet. At 120 klm per hour (74.5 mph) the distance expands dramatically to approximately 3 feet – which means the vehicle following you can’t possibly observe your brake lights. In other words… at 120 kilometers per hour never, ever brake in Italy. But this is only the beginning.

They have many small motor scooters, the vast numbers of which are the adorable Vespas. The majority of these it seems reside in Rome (or Roma depending on which spelling you prefer). If you can envision a bumble bee on cocaine inside a blender then this might be an apt description of the manner in which these uniquely cute machines are driven. They miss you by millimeters and dodge in and out and around and in front and in back of you. It is pure bedlam and a most definite adrenaline rush as you miss about twenty of these in the space of 30 seconds on any given street and especially in the roundabouts which are so prevalent in Europe. Many of these have two riders the second of which is generally a young, Italian female so I am assuming that the Vespa comes with this added feature.

Pedestrians are an altogether different proposition. They will walk right straight out into the street and directly in front of you irrespective of what your speed or direction is. It seems to border on a dare or, as the ancient Romans saw it, a gladiatorial challenge.

Roma is an ancient city. Many of the streets are quite ancient as are many of the buildings and curiously enough, the same holds true for the street signs. Many of the names of the streets are on small placards on the sides of the corner of a building. (The Italians have great fun with this as there is no uniform placement of any given street sign that I could see. Some signs are high and some are low and some are on the corner and some aren’t. A number of these street signs (many in fact now that I reflect upon it) are carved inscriptions on marble (probably handcrafted by a guy named Flavius in 200 B.C.) which were up and running when the Coliseum was open for business. I couldn’t read these from two feet away. In other words you’re essentially driving blind. GPS is worthless and a map even more so. If you stop for one single millisecond, all of Roma honks at you accompanied by many hand gesticulations which leave very little to the imagination. Uncle Scotty drives an H2 Hummer back in the States. This means that the speeds are low, the braking can be compared to stopping an aircraft carrier and turns require more than one point to negotiate. So here Brett and I are, in Roma at night, Uncle Scotty is driving a stick shifted rental and we are stuck in the middle of Roma at 2300 hours seeking our hotel. In other words I’m so far out of my element it wasn’t even funny. We drove by the Coliseum three times, the Spanish steps about six times, the balcony where Mussolini addressed the Italians during WWII, fifteen times and still we ended up right back where we started. Brett, concerned that I was about to have a meltdown on a Roman roundabout, had no choice but to start laughing, so I laughed and the Italian’s thought we were out of our minds.

Despite the insane driving techniques which are unique to Italy, we did not observe so much as one, single traffic accident, which is absolutely unbelievable. Apparently Italians have an inherent ability to avoid collisions as no other group of people that I’m aware of can. How this is possible is still beyond me. By the way, Italy penalizes you heavily when driving on the A1 or A2 highway. If you miss your turn you have to drive back the way you came for 9 miles paying tolls all over again and then back 9 miles (paying tolls again) to where you missed the turn in the first place. There are absolutely no other options unless perhaps you have a cart and a donkey or you are familiar with the ancient roads which weave in and out of small villages. I would speculate that Italy gathers a bulk of its national revenue from tourists who miss turns and then pay heavy tolls to drive the scenic Italian countryside yet again.