Just got back from a week in Italy, where we expected the standard of driving to be.... erm..... interesting.

We just weren't expecting quite so many nutters, especially considering we were out in the sticks, in Northern Tuscany!

Everyone either overtakes - irrespective of the width of the road, oncoming traffic, bends, crests, doesn't matter, they just trundle by in their 950cc Fiat or whatever. And if they don't overtake, they drive 2 feet from your bumper!

They all seem to drive the same, young and old, male or female. Top prize has to go to the young man in a VW Beetle (current model). He followed us for about 2 miles up a hill, my wife was driving and she was throwing our Ford Ka (urgh!) hire car round the hairpins, and the guy just couldn't keep up, but on the short straights he would haul us in and sit on our bumper until the next hairpin, where the lighter Ka would pull away again through the bend.

Eventually, he went for it on a very short straight, so he had to hammer on the brakes for the next hairpin (with his mirror full of Ka ;D).

Once past, he soon disappeared off, but 2 minutes later when we got to the top of the hill there was the Beetle parked outside a house. He must have legged it to disappear inside before we passed

Most scary moment was being passed by an Audi A4 turbodiesel estate who appeared from NOWHERE to overtake on a single carriageway, completely ignoring the opposing traffic, and missing us by inches. I would estimate his speed to be well in excess of a 100mph (we were doing about 50, and he passed us like we were parked on the hard shoulder of the motorway here!).

One minute later, the Carabinieri shot by in their Alfa doing about 120-130! Once more we pi55ed ourselves, but with laughter this time

It's not just overtaking either, they CANNOT keep to their side of the road when cornering, always cut left hand bends, and never seem to correct their line to avoid you! On one wet downhill right hand bend, we met a Passat coming the other way in the middle of the narrow road. I have no idea how we missed him, I thought we were fcuked.

Had to do a 120 mile round trip back here in the UK this morning, well impressed by the standard of driving (you won't here me say that very often!).

 

If you aint livin' on the egde, you takin' up too much space!

 

If you're dead, you ain't livin' on the edge no more.....

 

Dunno if you noticed as I did in Italy a couple of years ago, but the word Stop doesn't seem to appear in the Italian vocabulary?

 

Yep, they are awful on the road. I used to live in an Italian ski resort and believe me, it was frightening! Not only on the hairpin laden road up to the resort, but in the resort as well.
Mossman

 

Germans always cut left hand bends as well, you'd think it would be the other way...still don't understand it myself. As they say when in Rome Glad you get though unscathed

 

"If you're in control - you're not going fast enough"

Michael Andretti

Maybe it didn't help you that Italien people drive in the right side of the road.
Lars

 

Camk, the Germans are just crap drivers plain and simple.

 

I lived in Italy for two years ... what fun.

In Rome it was so bad people stopped on green and went on red

Ian