Quote:
Originally Posted by kittygilchrist
Just back from Italy, where drivers of buses, cars, trucks, and a zillion scooters and motorcycles COLLABORATE to share tiny streets in cities and the crazy curves on mountains.
It is a thing of beauty, a symphony. Where there are no crosswalks or signals, which is almost everywhere in the cities, pedestrians simply step boldly into the traffic and all the vehicles stop to let those on foot cross. Drivers expect to have at least a few inches of distance between vehicles and can all parallel park in impossibly small spots.
Here in the USA, we want to be first and hog space and make everybody else drive like we want them to and be out of patience with anybody not following the rules and how dare they pause in my way and stay the hell several feet from my car. and I am first to admit I am describing myself before I saw a different culture and philosophy of how to drive.
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I agree with you to some extent, but this traffic circle thing is a real safety issue. And we in the States have a different manner of driving than those in other countries--not right or wrong, in my opinion, just differrent.
It's a different mindset in each country. For instance, in his book
The Titanic Awards, about the world's worst traffic mishaps, Doug Lansky says about driving in Naples, Italy:
"When I rented a car in Napoli, the manager at the Hertz office told me 'Driving here is like a video game. You just have to relax, stop thinking, and feel it in your stomach' The traffic signals were especially tricky as the red, yellow and green colored lights were obeyed no more than Christmas decorations. Red lights were run as a matter of decent driving."
Yet we found driving in Italy to be fairly easy, but we were not driving in the big cities. Driving in Paris was a nightmare. Their traffic circles--each has a different set of rules, mostly made up by the natives. There are driving schools geared teaching you how to navigate each circle.