On The Road…..

A YouTube video recently stated that speed limits in Italy are ‘merely a suggestion’.

I wish that were true as we have racked up at least a few fines to date which feels a bit mean as it actually seems that speed limits are there to almost give you permission to drive at double the speed or every day is a Sunday so you’re meant to drive at 1/8th of the number on the sign. To add to our frustration, the internal rear-view mirror appears to have become redundant as no one uses them.                                           

But what most definitely seem to be ‘a suggestion’ are the rules of the road.                                       

Let’s start with parking. OMG! You can park anywhere and in whatever direction takes your fancy. Watching someone park in the very middle of a large bus stop in the center of Alba was an eye-opener for me. When the bus arrived and, of course couldn’t pull off the road and out of traffic, the driver just stopped in the middle of traffic to allow his passengers to alight and then make their way around the parked car to the foot path. A long line of drivers banked up behind the bus and no one batted an eyelid, not even the bus driver.                                                                                                              

Parking over a cross walk, again in the middle of town, is perfectly normal and after almost 4 years here, we don’t even notice it any more. Parking in shopping centres is an adventure in itself. Most centres don’t have angled parking but drivers seem to find it far more convenient to angle park regardless of marked bays. The use of two bays for one car is a fair thing and also very much the norm. I once had to climb into our car from the boot as the lunatic who parked next to me angled parked with his front passenger door less than 50cm from my driver’s side door. My mate on the other side backed in so close that I couldn’t use that door either. They both got very ‘polite’ notes from me on their windshields. I even wrote them in Italian.                                                                      

But the real gob-smacking moment for me was watching a young guy park his new Audi inside the confusion of a big town round-about on a Saturday morning.                                                            

Farm traffic can be very entertaining. As we live in the country, we often find ourselves stuck behind tractors. Most of the time the drivers pull over for cars. A particular morning will be etched on my mind forever. We were heading into Neive and were behind a big tractor towing a trailer carrying a small vine tractor which was not tied down. As we entered the round-about, the big tractor pulled over to the right to let us pass. It was then that we noticed that the farmer we could see was not the one in control of the big tractor at the front. The guy we could see was sitting in the vine tractor on the trailer. I suppose he probably needed a lift and as farm tractors are normally only built for one person, the obvious choice was to use the spare seat on the trailer. They not only drove past the police station, they got a friendly wave from the local carabinieri, as they continued on down the road.                                                                 

On another day, on our way home from Alba, we were stuck behind a big tractor which was driving so erratically that we knew we had no hope of getting past. It took us a while to work out that the farmer driving the tractor was deeply immersed in a chat on the phone so not in the slightest bit interested in anything but his call. He also wasn’t in control of the vehicle at all. He had his grandson, who looked about 8, sitting on his lap doing the steering!
 
Serious madness!