Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

 

 

Italian traffic is legendary.  They have rules and ignore them.  Even on the freeways, I was amazed at how the taxi driver changed lanes and tailgated and....we survived.

 

Here are a couple of the smaller roads in Tivoli...and since this was the only access to the parking, it is a two way road.

 

 

 

Jaywalking is undefined in Italy, in the same way that dividing by zero in mathematics is undefined.  It just doesn't happen, because you have as much right to the road as the cars and bicycles and motorcycles and busses.  Notice how we are walking in the middle of the street?  In a lot of streets, you don't actually have a choice.  Even getting on a ferry to go to Capri, we went on at the same time as the cars, with no traffic control.  At All.

 

Italians, however, can tell who are the tourists.  They are the ones with cameras taking pictures of (what is for them) normal things.  Suitcases are a dead (hmm...possibly a bad adjective) giveaway -- I got honked at then.

 



 

On larger and busier streets, it does pay to use the crosswalk sign, although you still have to watch out.  We watched this Pompeii intersection from the café.  It is supposed to be a two way stop, with the cross street having right of way.  It was more like a four way stop, except that you had several cars in the intersection at the same time.  And "stop" isn't at all accurate.  Even a "California stop" doesn't really describe it, since Californians at least stop when they have to yield right of way.

 

 

 

 

I think "right of way" is also undefined.

 

I really don't have any pictures or videos of the incredible dance of Italian traffic.  You just have to imagine a whole bunch of people walking around a piazza in different directions, avoiding each other, allowing others to go ahead, never running into each other...except they are driving cars.