9125 Motorways, roadworks and queues????

This one won't win "Thread of the Year", but maybe someone can help me sleep at night.

I have just driven from Scotland to Calabria, using nothing but motorway. In the UK we hit three sets of roadworks, and each time we queued before them, and stopped/started all the way through them. Then we reached Italy where we had numerous roadworks, each one more poorly signed than the previous, sometimes with only a notice 100m before the began, and most off them with a road surface suitable for road testing a moon buggy.

Yet did we have to queue? Not once! In fact, we hardly slowed down at all.

So can someone tell me why the difference? Is it because the Italians drivers don't slow down for anything less dangerous than a brick wall? Is it fewer cars on the road? Is it because us Brit's just like to be part of an orderly queue? Or was I just unlucky/lucky. I don't think so, because I notice this every time i'm over.

Please help me understand, because when I'm in my next UK queue, I might just get out and do an R.E.M.

:goofy:

Category
General chat about Italy

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 11:51

I've had a couple of truly hellish long-distance journeys on Autostrade, so I can assure you that creeping along in queues for literally hours is most definitely [B]not[/B] something that happens only in the UK. Those trips did not involve any roadworks at all, just a huge number of Italian drivers all wanting to go in the same direction I was heading.

As far as the common driving style in Italy improving the flow of traffic, I don't think this is the case. In heavy traffic, driving too fast and too close to the car in front causes those mysterious slow-downs we've all encountered on motorways where nothing at all is obviously wrong. I'm sure it also contributed to one other memorable feature of one of the horrendous trips I've mentioned: during the drive from the Italian-Austrian border to Abruzzo, we passed (eventually) three serious multiple-car collisions.

If your trip was not delayed by roadworks in Italy, I'd suggest the most likely explanation is that you were just fortunate to hit those bits of the road at a time when the traffic load was such that the restrictions did not cause problems.

Al

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 12:14

Al,

Your right, jams are not the copyright of the M25, M6 and M8. I'm sure I was just lucky with my last trip, but generally I have found that roadworks do not seem to cause the same tail backs as the UK. Maybe just my imagination or maybe it's the roads I travel on.

You're spot on with your comment on the consequences of such driving, but it does not seem to stop people from carrying on as if they own the road and you should not be on it. Allthough in my experience there seems to be a lot less incidences of 'road rage' than the UK. Or is that because I don't drive in Napoli or Roma?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 12:48

I moved to Italy around 18 months ago, so my memories of what driving in the UK was like are fading. Also, I lived in Scotland and, although my impression is that it has changed a little over the last few years, I always noticed a marked difference in driving styles when I visited places like Birmingham and London. Scottish drivers are - in general - almost painfully polite. For example, it was normal when I lived there for road work signs to direct drivers to continue to use both lanes until close to the point where the lane closed; while there was always the occasionally idiot who nearly drove into the cones before moving over, most drivers moved out of the closed lane as soon as they saw a sign indicating which one it would be. This seemed to offend the traffic planners who apparently think we should all merge in turn at the last possible moment rather than two miles before the closure. What the difference is in the end, I fail to see.

If you're used to that sort of driving, the sort of behaviour you see on Autostrade requires a bit of mental adjustment. But after a few months, I got to the point where I'd have visitors in the car gasping in amazement at what they were seeing on the Rome GRA (ring road), while I had to think twice about what they were worrying about.

My point is that if you're used to the M6, M25 and inner London traffic, then driving in Abruzzo or the wilds of Puglia is likely to seem pretty tame. Conversely, I know that some of my neighbours in Abruzzo were seriously frightened when they hit the the Rome GRA during one of its rush hours, so it's definitely not some sort of Italian genetic or cultural thing.

I can't off the top of my head recall ever seeing what seemed to me a case of "road rage" in Italy, but I have seen an awful lot of very aggressive driving. It seems to me that far too many Italian drivers view driving as a competitive activity. Their thinking that they're scoring points is the only explanation I've come up with for things like a driver overtaking in a totally inappropriate place and then screeching to a halt in their driveway 100 metres on.

Al

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 13:15

Someone said to me that "Italians take life so easy that when they get in their cars they try to make up as much time as possible". Maybe as I spend more time there I will get into their way of thinking. But like you, I can not say I've seen road rage, even when they are faced with someone having commited the equivalent of 'auto-hari-kiri'. And the driving in the South seems to be so much more aggresive than the north.