Driving in Naples, part 1

I’ve been warned repeatedly not to draw conclusions about Naples and about Italy. I should be wary of classifying or otherwise definitively describing any observed action—driving, for instance—because invariably there will be a much larger back story than I could ever hope to learn, let alone summarize or explain.

These warnings, much like the staggering hubris that every word I vomit into the blogosphere actually edifies the six people who read it, ought to make me pause at least for a moment or two before sitting down to write about my impressions of Italian driving so far. But I got my Italian driver’s license today, without once getting behind the wheel in this continent, so before I actually participate in the madness I’ll give a summary of what I’ve seen as a green outsider.

This will undoubtedly be the first of many posts about this invigorating example of Italian creativity.

I’ve ridden in buses and cars in Haiti. Often during those harrowing, white-knuckle prayer meetings we called transits, our police escorts would brandish their heavy rifles or machine guns at anyone refusing to give us the right of way. Which was everyone. Even when we were in oncoming traffic’s far right lane on an eight-lane “road” (as best I could make out), our speed didn’t correspond to any reality my mind could comprehend. Any atheists who survived their foxholes would be singing hallelujah on those roads and praying to the bright, shiny Jesus who grinned from every psychedelic city bus in Port-au-Prince.

So, that being said, I don’t expect to die on the roads here in Naples. I still haven’t seen a random cement wall built across two lanes of highway. No guns have been brandished to defend right of way. In fact, there’s a lot to be said for the highway rules as the Italians understand them. Very much used to living close together and breathing the exact same oxygen as ten members of their extended family, they don’t believe anyone is entitled to an entire lane all by themselves. Merging onto the freeway doesn’t require all these lane changes, just a little shift over the white lines, about a third of the car, as you decide which of you is going faster. No biggie.

The left lane is just for passing. If you don’t move over, you’re probably not from here.

When traffic is stopped (traffic jams, stoplights), motorcycles, mopeds, vespas, etc. are actually allowed to zip between cars (yes, they can fit even when three lanes become five, six, seven). My gut tells me to ignore them and they won’t run into the back of me. Confirmed in today’s driving safety course. All very academic, of course.

Your mirrors don’t belong to you. Don’t cling to your possessions, man.

City intersections are a delicate dance, a fine art I will have to study and study and stumble through many times before I have any idea what’s going on there. But they don’t stop if they don’t have to, and they don’t waste time or money on stoplights.

And all the people I’ve ridden with will have to relearn how to drive when they get back to the states. You can’t do most of what Italians do on the road in America, with the exception of somehow NOT hit other cars. That’s perfectly legal where I grew up, but they tell me that per capita there are many, many more accidents and more deaths on the DC beltway than on Naples.

We’ll see. I wonder what I’ll have to unlearn in a few years. Stay tuned as I learn the roads…