This will be fun…if we make it out without a scratch

I’ve been really unimpressed with the quality of Italian driving.  Before coming here I had the illusion that all the drivers here in Italy would be fast, smart and savvy.  Not the case at all.  Generally the drivers here are perhaps even worse than the largely true cliché about Asian drivers in L.A.   However, when we hit Napoli (Naples), it was a WHOLE different ball game. 

I’d been warned that the Neapolitan drivers were a breed unto themselves, with little respect for traffic rules.  We found this out quickly as we exited the main A3 north – south freeway in Napoli and hit the sidestreets on our way to Pompeii.   The change was immediate and immense.  The off ramp turned to the right and ended at a junction with a traffic light.  As if to illustrate what the change was, the traffic lights were flashing red and yellow.  “What does that even mean?” I asked Mary.  I watched a few cars handle the junction, and what it meant was that whoever pushed their way most aggressively into the junction got to go.  So I pushed my way out when a tiny gap appeared, and everything seemed to go smoothly.

The streets quickly got narrower, and the mopeds more numerous.  They weave constantly around the cars, coming in both directions.  They are rarely on the side of the road they should be on.  You have to wonder what would happen should they both be pulling this stuff at the same time.

I said to Mary:  “This will be fun…if we make it out without a scratch”.

I found it quite useful to start actually aiming for the mopeds as they came towards me.  I think this was not standard operating procedure, so when they saw me doing this they would duck into a gap and let me go past.

Most amazing was that the mopeds and motorbike riders did not even look when they were pulling out.  I surprised the heck out of one rider when he simply came straight out of a side road I was turning into, and by my continuing to turn he had to actually stop.  Then at other junctions cars would simply come onto the wrong side of the junction so they could make their way out.  Interesting enough, no one seems to use a car horn here.

I was thankful to be done with this action and back onto the freeway…without a scratch.  As we came back through Napoli to get to Vesuvius, I even said to Mary that I would welcome not having to drive the side streets again.   Not to be.  The A3 freeway is being totally rebuilt, so several on-ramps were shut, which our GPS unit had no idea about.  Then there were new on ramps that weren’t even on the map.   It was back to fighting things out on the roads of Napoli.  

My favorite “win” was when we came to a fairly major two lane road where I had the stop sign.  I just kept on going and the cars on the main road just stopped for me like it was normal.  Given our GPS had no idea where to go, and the signs for the A3 literally would point BOTH ways at the intersections, we felt pretty lucky when we found a couple of Polizia cars at a roundabout that we could stop and ask the way.  It turned out we were right next to the brand new on-ramp, so we were quickly off the streets of Napoli and back on the nice, large, and relatively safe toll road.

Ciao,

David