On Thu, 13 May 2004 08:17:13 -0500, jcoulter
> wrote:

>ridiculous driving in Italy is insane everywhere!

Yes, correct, but if I must compare Italy and France, we have two
different kinds of road chaos.

In Italy, the objective is to get wherever you are heading to as
quickly as possible; the horn is a device that gives off short beeps,
like radar, it warns you of nearby vehicles so you can adjust your
crazy trajectory to avoid collision. Hence the horn button in Italy
takes up 95% of the steering wheel (the turning function ins
secondary), you can hit any spot with your entire arm, with your
elbow, your chin, anything and it will go off.

In France, the objective is not to get there quickly, but rather to
get there before the other guy, at all cost. The horn is a device used
to insult people, if you use it you risk a fight. So the horn switch
in France is a piddly button on the side of the steering wheel, to be
operated vigorously with your middle finger.

Traffic accidfent statistics are very interesting:

Italy has twice as many accidents as France. Germany has almost twice
as many accidents as Italy.

Oddly enough, all three countries have a similar number of fatal
acidents. So if you look at accident severity, France is has the
second highest percentage of fatal accidents in Europe, only Greece is
higher. Finland, Ireland and Denmark are close behind. The lowest
accident severity is in Germany and the UK.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France
email link http://www.tommasi.org/mymail