Italian Driving

Is there really room for cars and people

I have often heard that Italian drivers are the worst in the world, or at least Italy was the one place you should never drive. Well I joined the ranks of Italian drivers and ventured out on the Italian roadways to see just how bad it was.

Now I pride myself with being able to drive almost anything anywhere, but I must admit that I was very nervous about this road trip. The apartment complex also rents cars, motorcycles and bicycles, so we rented a Fiat Panda for two days. The Fiat Panda must be the most inexpensive car in Italy. It has a tiny engine, very basic seating and NO options, no cruise and no navigation system. It does however do everything and seats four in relative comfort – it gets you from here to there and hopefully back again. The car I was renting was parked inside the courtyard, and I was told my way out of the old city was to turn right out of the big green doors and then take the first right straight out of the city. That sounds fine, but these big green doors were designed for horses and carriages. The day we arrived I watched a big Audi sedan go out and he had to drive over the two little semi circles on either side of the door, and I had visions of trying to turn right and hitting either the bench beside the Gelato shop next door, or the vending machines across the street at the lottery shop, and I had seen cars trying to navigate these streets . . .

The Ideal car for lecce

Fortunately we were leaving at 7:00 am, and the streets would be relatively free of pedestrians at that hour, and I made it out the doors and into the streets. Without so many people and other vehicles I made it out of the narrow old city streets and around two round-a-bouts to the highway out of town. The day was off to a positive start.

The Italian highways are actually very good, with excellent signage and clearly marked speed limits. However I discovered that those clearly marked speed limits are not exactly what I am used to. Apparently the speed limit is 130 km per hour, but this is not marked anywhere; what is marked is when they think you might want to slow down for corners, construction or tunnels. I reasoned that these limits must be optional, because no one seemed to pay them any attention. The traffic on the highways was usually pretty good with little congestion, and passing slower traffic easy. You just had to watch for those big Audi, BMW or Mercedes, which seemed to be allowed to drive at any speed they wished, and overtook my little Fiat Panda at breathtaking rates. I was warned that speed is monitored via cameras on the overpasses, and there were signs warning drivers of this electronic monitoring, but most drivers seemed little concerned with this threat, and I cannot imagine those left lane sedans were going at 130.

Seriously? Drive out through here?

Turn Right down here . . .

Part of the reason for this road trip was to drive the Amalfi coastal roads. I had seen pictures and heard about them, but was not really prepared for these roads. I had driven narrow roads in England and had practice bouncing rental cars off the curbs, but here there are no curbs or ditches; the roads are bordered by solid rock face on one side and two foot stone safety walls on the cliff side. They seem to paint white lines down the middle some of the time, and after a while we decided that this was where there was actually close to two actual lanes. Most of the time however there was no markings on the road, but plenty of scrapes on the stone walls and cliff faces. Combine this with roads built on cliff faces and constantly twisting back and forth and around blind corners. Then you have to share these roads with huge tour buses and crazy scooter drivers. The tour buses of course have to drive carefully, but the scooters drive like there is nothing else on the road. They pass whenever they like and just expect to be able to dodge oncoming traffic. Fortunately no one except them drive really crazy – there just is not room between switchbacks to get up to any speed.

Driving Amalfi

At one point I was in a line of traffic following a tour bus. The bus driver saw another bus coming and realized there was not room for them to pass, so he pulled in close to the wall to let the other bus pass. The first four cars in line behind the bus immediately pulled out and took the opportunity to pass the bus. There was room for two to get in; the other two forced the oncoming bus to slow to avoid hitting them. Of course there were not scooters in the line; they had already roared past earlier.

That's a long way down . . .

Although it would have been fun to be driving this road on a nice red Ducati 999, I was actually glad to be in the little Panda which gave me a couple of inches to spare passing other vehicles. At one point, I had to creep past a bus with barely an inch or two between the bus and my side mirror. No wonder so many cars have their side mirrors missing or taped on.

All in all this was a thrilling drive that I loved and will always remember as one of the greatest roads I have driven.

Now the Amalfi would be more fun on this 

Then there was Naples . . . . we had to drop the boys off at the Naples Train Station and then get out of the city to get back to Lecce. Everything bad about Italian drivers is represented in driving downtown Naples. The roads are four decent lanes wide but the curbside lanes are all taken with parked cars regardless of the signs. If there isn’t a parking spot, double parking is common. That leaves almost two actual lanes for traffic, but there is usually at least four lanes of vehicles trying to get somewhere. The lines on the streets indicating lanes are completely ignored. Then there are the scooters who literally scoot between lanes and switching lanes to and fro at will. You cannot hesitate or someone will take your spot, and I quickly got into the Italian attitude and forced my way where I wanted to go, and we got out of the city and back on the highway.

All in all I did pretty well and the Panda got returned with only dead bugs ruining its pristine finish.