"Tom S" > wrote in
m:

>

>> >My travel agent tells me that driving in Italy becomes increasingly
>> >dangerous the farther South one goes.

ridiculous driving in Italy is insane everywhere!

but on a more on topic theme, I too have noticed a lack of degustation type
signs in Italy and more enotecas offering samples of local wines. So if
sampling the local goods is the thing the local wine shops are the place.
OTOH, the back roads are beautiful.

>>
>> I would not say it is dangerous, the style changes, it demands more,
>> how should I says this, flexibility? One gets used to it.
>
> Hi, Mike -
> It sounds like you are delicately suggesting something akin to "Mr.
> Toad's Wild Ride" (an old Disneyland attraction). IOW, there aren't
> any traffic laws (or at least none that are enforced) and one would be
> well advised to rent the car that has the loudest horn! ;^)

That loud horn will save you on many a twisty mountain road. There are
plenty of traffic laws in italy-with many interpretations- Italy is the
only place where I have seen traffic cops routinely inspired to tear up
tickets after watching dramatic explanations for ordinary wrong behavior.

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

Mike Tommasi wrote:

> On Thu, 13 May 2004 08:17:13 -0500, jcoulter
> > wrote:
>
>
>>ridiculous driving in Italy is insane everywhere!
>
> 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.
>

While I have not driven in Italy, I've ridden a motorbike there. The
traffic in there does have a the kind of logic Mike describes.

I've been, for example, beeped in traffic lights by a car driver behind
me for NOT lane-splitting and riding to the front. (Most traffic lights
I saw in Italy had two stopping lines, the first one for bikes and the
second for cars. Bikes and mopeds were supposed to lane-split to the
first line.)

It's also rather easy to learn. On a bike, one learns pretty soon to
take the panniers off for a ride, unless you really need them. It's
easier to lane-split on a narrower bike. Rather soon passing the lines
of cars feels quite natural.

Riding back north, I was also already using the horn in the switchbacks
in the mountain roads. Just remember not to do that once you've crossed
to Switzerland.

While I did not venture into a large city, I did ride on the autostrada
on my trip from from Mandello del Lario, near Milan, to around Isola
Vicentino and Vicenza, and I must say that I've never ridden on a
smoother road. The pace of the traffic was, however, even more hectic
than that in Germany on the autobahn. Based on this experience I'd say
that riding/driving in Italy is quite not bad as most say.

The Soave winery was somewhere along the autostrada; i could smell it
easily (well, the Soave works hardly qualify as a winery, it mostly
resembles a factory).

Cheers,

-Topi Kuusinen, Finland

"Mike Tommasi" > wrote in message
...
> Traffic accidfent statistics are very interesting:
>
> Italy has twice as many accidents as France. Germany has almost twice
> as many accidents as Italy.

Is that per capita, Mike, or total accidents? Seems like that figure should
be adjusted for population to be meaningful.

Tom S