A MORNING DRIVE IN TUSCANY!

This morning I had a scheduled visit to my acupuncturist Dr. Fu Man Choo!!, and quite apart from a bad neck I ruminated enroute that I was lucky to be alive and wouldn’t be if the Italian drivers had anything to do with it.

My impression was that Italians were supposed to be good drivers.   Didn’t they sprout Juan Fangio, et al, or were they all Spanish?   Maybe they are better on the race track than on the roads.   You take your life in your hands when you join them on their daily route to and from work.

They believe that Fast is good, Slow is for wimps.   They have just been introduced to roundabouts near here and someone has told them that this traffic hazard has to be entered at a speed no lower than 80 kilometres and it is imperative to carve up anyone either already on it or just about to enter.

This should be done whilst on the telephone to your Mother or texting your girlfriend!   Failure to be doing one or the other will result in a fine.

This is also their mindset when entering a main road from a smaller side road.   They wait until you are dangerously close to their point of entry and pull out like a bullet and immediately slow down to adjust their phone to their ear.   Once comfortably adjusted they increase speed just as a corner approaches and then gun it.   This gives them a quick buzz of adrenaline and they are now ready to scare a few more poor unsuspecting tourists.

When they have caught up the more sedate drivers they see how close they can manoeuvre themselves in order to read the maker of their sunglasses and insert themselves half way up the poor mans exhaust pipe.   At this point it is imperative they flash their headlights several times just to intimidate the poor fool completely.

Their best game is to play, “Guess Which Way I Am Going”.   Someone also told Italian drivers that it is cissy to use your indicator.   Many points are garnered if you enter a roundabout at eighty kilometres an hour and then without warning dart to one side of the road and then the other as if you are about to leave but then change your mind and in doing so, totally confuse everyone around you.

These habits are bad but the one that frightens the life out of me and did this morning on the way to my doctor is their penchant of driving on your side of the road instead of their own.   The guy we bought our car off was leaving and going back to Australia because he said he couldn’t put up with the Italian driving for another year.   He said he had been nearly killed many times and now before they could intimidate him, he just drove straight at them if they had as much as a millimetre of their tyres over on his side of the white line.

I now drive as though in a tactical battle with a whole country full of people trying to kill me.   The roads around here have been designed by someone who has never driven, lined on both sides with billboards that distract even the most cautious of people.   They have put zebra crossings just over the brow of hills, just after a roundabout when one thinks it is safe to accelerate, and in the middle of nowhere when the speed limit is 70 kmh.   I often hear the siren of police and ambulance from the road leading to Arezzo and I think how that accident could have been avoided if only the road had been properly designed.   

It is a deathtrap and is lined with bunches of flowers left by the dearly departed.

Someone should not only improve the roads around here but also the standard of driving.