Driving in Italy

The driving experience in Italy is not for the faint of heart. You may have heard the rumors. But before sharing my impressions, let me speculate that any town full of sane, safe, and cautious American drivers who pride themselves on good habits and courtesy to others would become raving lunatics if they had to drive in the conditions that Italians face -- heavy traffic, narrow streets, and few parking spaces. Imagine playing musical chairs, with half the chairs taken away, while walking on hot coals, barefoot.

It must be a survivable experience, though. There are some wonderful old classic cars on the road. And it sure helps to have a small car, which is the norm.

We rented a turbo-diesel Fiat at the Milan airport. The early part of the drive felt very familiar. It was a matter of merging onto the Autostrada toward the first night's stop on Lake Como. That was nothing more than a typical workday journey on a California freeway, except the towns listed on exit signs seemed much more exotic.

Then we reached the town of Como, and the game changed. The road from Como to Bellagio is about 1-1/2 lanes wide, with two-way traffic. I was fairly intimidated. The cars never really seemed to slow down, and not content with their own side of the road, borrowed a fair part of what I thought should be mine. It was tricky as we weaved thru ancient towns where houses and shops jutted their sharp stone corners into the roadway. All the while motorcyclists, hunched forward over the handle bars to lower wind resistance, whizzed by, using the road as a great slalom race, with the cars as moving slalom markers, to add the extra bit of thrill.

Later we learned about the road marking system. On a freshly repaired and widened rural 2 lane road, there was a white stripe down the middle. When the road narrowed by half a lane, the dividing stripe disappeared. With the white stripe, it means two vehicles can safely pass by staying on their own side of the road. Without the stripe, I think that's the way the highway department says "Good luck on passing each other; we can't figure it out!" That's why you have to borrow some of the other lane.

When you venture into a city, the great no parking conspiracy shows on every street. There are stories of blue zones, marked legal spaces, with parking meters on the block to dispense receipts for your dashboard. We found a few, just enough to believe all was not quite hopeless, just very trying. We did begin to take it personally, though, when we discovered the truck full of no parking signs. We were sure they were putting them up special just for us.

It was the stay in Ravenna, though, that gave us a clue on one of the great mysteries of the universe. We needed to move the car from a nearby but temporary parking spot to the long term lot. With map in hand, I started off toward the lot, looking for the first available left hand turn. Instead, I was greeted by a sign that means "Right turn only". A temporary inconvenience, I thought. But there was soon another, then another, then...another. Four mandatory right turns in a row adds up to trouble, as far as I could tell. The intervals were becoming shorter, and that must mean there's a really big pile-up of cars at the center of this town.

Or there's a giant black hole that sucks up cars to maintain a traffic density equilibrium. The streets were lined with no parking signs, forcing cars to continue ever onward into the clutch of super gravity. That meant it was time for action, Italian style...a quick illegal left turn into a one-way street the wrong way, a reverse and back out, and a fast retreat in the other direction. Fortunately, the black hole only claimed the right front hub cap. At least, that's one explanation on how we lost it. Hertz didn't seem bothered when we turned the car in; it must happen a lot.

There were so many other signs of the influence of these town center black holes. I figure that the only explanation for so few big vehicles and so many small cars is that the black hole is sucking mass from them. Eventually, they shrink to nothing, which is why we never saw a major junk yard. Think of the ecological advantages.

Some cars do crunch. It's surprising that we didn't see more. Maybe the Italian drivers are actually more rational than their reputation, and occasionally one will take pity on a poor tourist, let you into traffic, and wave. Just don't depend on that for your driving strategy.