Driving in Italy: Skills, Creativity and a Little Too Much Testosterone

Every year I go back to Italy to see my family in Bologna and my two best friends. One lives in Spain, the other one in Paris. After an 8-hour plane ride from the US, I generally don't take another plane, I drive to Barcelona. The trip is 11 hours, with a stop in between to spend a night in a charming village of the South of France: Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

I rent a car and off I go to Barcelona where the three of us meet for a few days: landscapes, foods, languages, and, naturally, highways of three different countries.

On the Italian highways I experience the Italian Drivers. There are few categories I don't look forward to encountering. Besides the feared Old-Man-With-The-Hat (who never realizes he is occupying two lanes) and the Sunday-With-The-Children driver (dangerously distracted by wife/food/music), the typical Cowardly-Aggressive Italian driver is a male 30-40-50-60 years old, probably married, but not necessarily. He does something that I've never seen their fellow cousins (French) and half-brothers (Spaniards) do: once on the left lane of a highway, far surpassing the speed limit to pass everyone else, he violently signals the cars in front of him, till he scares them and potently roars away.
Now, I don't particularly appreciate a clumsy driver, but I hate the Cowardly-Aggressive. The same guy, past the French border, decides to adjust to the better-behaved crowd and restrains himself. It helps that in France you're constantly reminded of the speed limit (130 km/hr, like in Italy). In the Belpaese, the only signs for speed are those that tell you to slow down temporary (because of works or particularly hard curves). But when it's time to go back to normal, very rarely you are told the maximum speed (and almost never South of Tuscany).

Advice while driving on Italian highways? If you feel safe enough, when the Cowardly-Aggressive driver is breathing down your neck, hit the break ever so gently and you'll see him significantly slowing down (although that won't stop him from cursing at you while finally passing, with his fist up in the air in mute loathing).

But, besides the testosterone, I love driving in Italy either in cities or highways. Only there you can experience the truly skillful driver: man, woman, old or young, the Italian-Skillful-Driver mixes a deep knowledge of the machine they're driving (only reachable with manual cars) and a supreme creativity in using it (particularly while creating parking places out of nearly everything). The Italian-Skillful-Driver has border-Formula-1 moves in the tangenziale and masters the art of maneuvering in narrow medieval streets.

And let me say something about the use of traffic lights. We like to think that in Napoli cars ignore red lights. I was recently in Napoli: driving there is like taking your masters degree. Cars are fast, move from lane to lane without signaling, try to push it a little too much at the yielding sign, but they do stop at the red light. I've seen it (don't let other people tell you otherwise)!

To recap: driving in Italy requires, first and foremost, love for the journey and for your car. That's why we drive manual: we like to hear the engine passing from gear to gear, we like to use the appropriate one, we enjoy a quiet voyage on the hills with the windows rolled down (there is a song by Fabio Concato, Guido Piano, that explains it beautifully).

If you rent a car there, my advice is to let a little of that joy take over and to fully insure yourself (just in case).