Saturday 15 September 2012

Italia Driving



Lovely hols, lovely time.

A few observations about driving.


  • Signage is a joke, it just peters out in many places, bless the sat-nav. But then again, I say that about any country that isn't the UK...but I grew up in Europe due to father in forces so not too blinkered.
  • Men at work, usually stand around in live lanes, protected only by flags and Mother Mary.
  • The police are cracking down on the poor reputation of Italian driving. Everywhere with speed cameras.
  • Toll roads are nice and quiet except rush hour for obvious reasons.
  • Painting of Jesus and or Mary, are secured in little shrines that overlook blind and dangerous junctions...Yes, because cosmic beings will grant you grace to drive safely over a crossroads without beeping, flashing your lights, looking or even slowing down.
  • The National Trust would have a fit over there, beautiful Tuscan hill town, with a bloody great autostrada wrapped around it...Or the best one was the lovely church tower at Osia Sopra, that has a whopping great bridge over the motorway type Autogrill (services) slapped right in front of it.
  • Driving is very much 'Will of God' kind of driving, rather than it being the fault of the drivers. Saw plenty of over turned cars with confused occupants being helped by crowds. Low speed overturnings...How?
  • The authorities clean accidents off of the autostrada quickly. I only spent 45 mins waiting near Geneva, and then they convoyed us past tangled metal, over sanded surfaces. Not like the UK where it's 8 hours needing a piss before a surly policemen informs you that somebody has died. "Not my genes, you've probably taken them to the morgue by now and I need a wee!" is my ex-services answer. I'm never overly shocked by the attempted emotional punch. "Get the sand down and convoy us on our way please."
  • I was nearly killed, several times...



I'll just share one example, from a very very long list.

Car in outside lane, slowly attempting to over-take me at about 1kph faster, on cruise control no doubt. Lorries in usual slow lane, I am in middle lane overtaking lorries.
I see another lorry attempting to join the lane to the right, lorry in slow lane in front of me just pulls into my lane mega early to allow lorry on, no warning to allow me to bleed off speed, luckily though I was already anticipating a situation and was going to pull into the 3rd lane.

The guy in 3rd overtaking lane couldn't give a damn about my predicament and had started to accelerate in order to block off my only escape route. Why did he do that? The utter tossbag.

I still pulled into the 3rd lane though becase I'd rather have a Fiat rear-end me than hit the back of a lorry. Numpty gets mad. Idiots.

In the UK, 99% of us would see that situation develop and back off to let the middle lane escape. Yet in Italy it seems that there is an astonishing lack of awareness or ability to perceive hazards. Will fo God I guess.

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