I’ve always believed in the truth of a cliche. If so many people repeat something so many times that it becomes a cliche, well, talk about having to define a word by using it.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise to me that every word I’ve ever read about Italian drivers is true. And it REALLY shouldn’t surprise me because this is our third visit to Italy. And every time, EVERY TIME, I am surprised at just how bad the drivers are. They are are absolutely insane. And apparently they are notorious too because every guide book I have read on the country warns non-Italian drivers.
But whatever system they use here seems to work. I have sucked in my breath more than once, shrieked a few times, and grabbed the hold on for dear life handle above the passenger door and held on for dear life. And of course, the seat belt which we have been using since we bought our first car in 1970, is done up before the key goes into the ignition.
They drive WAY too fast here. The speed limit on most motor ways is 130 and we have been passed and left in the dust too many times to count by cars going significantly faster than that. Mind you Canadian drivers could take a hint from some of their behaviours. For example, you don’t drive in the left lane, you pass in the left lane, and if someone comes up behind you and you’re in the left lane, you jolly well get out of the left lane. Right smartly too.
Because drivers do come right up behind you. Their cars get so close you fear intimate relations between the two vehicles is imminent. And off spring would be involved.
But they pass any time. Going up a hill, into a blind corner. No problem. If a third car comes along well, don’t worry….a third lane will magically appear and all three vehicles, going in two different directions and at three different speeds, but in one time and space continuum will pass unscathed. Shrieking usually occurs in our vehicle. The trick seems to be to hold your course. If anyone departs from the choreography, mayhem is likely to ocur.
It’s terrifying to experience on a motorway type of situation, but to experience it on a backroad is a life altering experience. You really appreciate survival and celebrate living to tell the tale on arrival. The state roads are narrow, usually have no shoulders (just cliffs up and down on each side) and frequent hairpin curves. We are currently in a small town called Ponte agli Stolli. Sienna is 57 kilometres away. Our Lady of the Dash estimates travel time to be approximately 90 minutes. By the time we have slowed for towns, pulled over to let amorous vehicles pass, and been through road construction it takes closer to 110 minutes. Ken says the GPS ETA is there to drive the vehicle’s operator insane because it is impossible to achieve. We haven’t yet achieved an ETA, and are usually out by a factor of more than an hour on some of our longer journeys.
We have two sections of road marked as being under construction in our neck of the woods. In both cases, we have driven through the sections two or three times and seen no sign of work underway. But the damage is significant. We are in hills here. Roads, as I say have no shoulders. The damage we have noted is that half the lane has just disappeared. Collapsed and slid down the hill. Well, over the cliff really. Doesn’t seem to slow anyone but us down.
But I digress.
So Italians follow too close, at excessive speed, pass in dangerous situations. And the gestures!!!! We were second in line at a construction road stop, controlled by traffic lights. It was our turn to go, but someone at the other end had decided he was going to ignore the red light at his end. When he was faced with the unrelenting oncoming traffic with nowhere for him to go but over the edge or back, he threw his car into reverse, backed up and pulled over, then gesticulated at us all as we went by, like he was in the right and had back up as a gesture to the rest of the world. It was actually hilarious.
So the drivers are insane. And the small roads are filled with torturous hairpin curves. But the motorways are amazing. Italian engineers…. well they defy gravity with their bridges and centrifugal force with their curves. And with typical Italian “je ne sais pas” (I know that’s French, but I don’t know what it is in Italian) they just build. I mean why go around when you can go through. Why go down and back up when you can go across.
We crossed the border from France into Italy and immediately noticed a difference. We went through tunnel after tunnel and over bridge after bridge. At one point I said to Ken, “At this rate, we will have been through 50 tunnels by lunch.”
I was wrong.
By lunch we had passed through 147 tunels. Yes, I counted. And I wrote them down. Italian road builders want you to know just exactly what they have achieved. Every tunnel and every bridge is named, and measured, with a sign telling you what you are passing through. I didn’t write down the names, that would have been too much like OCD, but I did write their lengths down, filling two pages of my trusty and ever handy notebook. Just the tunnels, I didn’t bother with the bridges, there weren’t as many of them, although they were quite stunning in their lengths, some of them crossing entire valleys.
By the time we left the motorway, we had driven just under 500 kilometres and been through 198 tunnels, not counting four in Genova that were marked as artificial tunnels. So they didn’t count. We passed through several that were more than 1500 metres, but the longest was 3100 metres, the shortest was 40.
It was quite an astonishing drive.
Like all our drives in Italy. Either the roads or the drivers cause astonishment.
