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From: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Newsgroups: net.travel
Subject: Re: Transportation in Europe
Message-ID: <615@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jul-85 17:10:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcnc.615
Posted: Tue Jul  9 17:10:26 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 20:37:36 EDT
References: <62800001@hpfclr.UUCP>  <1611@dciem.UUCP> <64@ucbcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Organization: North Carolina Educational Computing Service
Lines: 28

In article <64@ucbcad.UUCP> klein@ucbcad.UUCP (Mike Klein) writes:
>> drivers are courteous and aggressive at the same
>> time, rather than timid and rude as is so often the case here.  If you
>> are a moderately competent driver with a controllable car, the contrast
>> is amazing.  After driving there, I find driving here to be frustrating
>> and hair-raisingly dangerous.
>
>Absolutely true!  I recently drove from Florence to Nice, then to Geneva.
>The Italians are the best drivers I have ever seen... fast but always
>alert, careful and courteous.  Never once saw anything even hinting at a
>collision in Italy (like panic braking) even in Rome and Florence.  The
>French are a cut below; Germans below that --- they are pretty bull-headed
>drivers.  American drivers simply aren't in the same league as any of these.

Having driven in Naples for a week this summer, I have to agree.  It took
me about an hour to get used to the road rules in Italy, but once having
adapted to them I felt much more secure than in the U.S.   Italian drivers
pay much more attention to the traffic around them and are much more skilled
at dealing with it than American drivers.  In the sense that they recognize
your right to get where you are going so long as you recognize their right
to get where they are going, they are infinitely more courteous than U.S.
drivers.  It isn't that the Italians can't afford traffic lights, they
really don't need them.  It gets a little crazy but it works!

-- 

						Byron C. Howes
				      ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch