Rules of the road from 4 wheels to 2
It may be true that all roads lead to Rome. Once you’re there, though, you might reconsider your mode of transportation.
I was in Italy on vacation with my wife, and during our four days in the capital we walked, took taxis or used the Metro. I did slide behind the wheel of a Ford S-Maxonce in Rome, but that was only to get to the northern Italian countryside. I steered clear of the city center.
It was a refresher course (though happily not a crash course) in the components of automotive safety.
There are, you see, three factors in automotive safety: The vehicle, the driver and the infrastructure. In central Rome, they all conspire against you.
It all starts with the roads, which are old, narrow and much too winding for a major metropolis. Because there is a religious or historic building everywhere you turn in Rome, it would be tough for city fathers to widen the streets. The one exception is the highway that runs by the Coliseum and the Forum. Benito Mussolini had it built in the 1920s to showcase his military parades.
Aggressive drivers
But there are too many cars — even small ones — for most other Roman roads. Consequently, Roman drivers learn to be aggressive as they fight for a place in traffic.
And more drivers are abandoning cars for two-wheeled vehicles that can scurry in and out of traffic faster than even the smallest cars.
There were more two-wheeled vehicles in Rome than in any city I’ve visited except maybe Bangkok in 1998, when the smell of two-stroke engines greeted every dawn and bluish smoke tinged the city.
The two-wheelers in Rome were much cleaner, but they weren’t all cute little Vespas like the one Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn rode in the 1953 movie Roman Holiday. I saw every imaginable two-wheeled configuration from little scooter to big motorcycle.
A week later, at the Automotive News Europe Congress in Turin, I asked European safety expert Michiel van Ratingen about two-wheeler safety.
He is secretary general of the European New Car Assessment Program, also known as Euro NCAP, which doesn’t apply to scooters or motorcycles for a variety of social and political reasons.
But van Ratingen confirmed what I suspected: There are a lot more two-wheeled vehicles in Europe than there used to be — and a lot more fatalities.
It frustrates him. Technological advances in the motorcycle industry such as antilock brakes and airbags could make two-wheeled vehicles safer. But he says the prevailing view in Europe is that risk comes with two-wheeled freedom.
In the United States, bikers have it drummed into their heads to ride defensively and assume that they are invisible to most drivers. Many do. Others ride fast to get out of the way.
Offensive drivers
In Europe, people on scooters and motorcycles ride offensively. In Rome, they ride very offensively. They’re nuts. And that’s compounded because in some countries people who lose their driver’s license — or are too young to have one — can still ride scooters.
I finally figured out that the de facto code of the road is a reverse safety food chain:
• Pedestrians walk wherever and whenever they want, oblivious to everything.
• Scooters must avoid pedestrians, but otherwise can go wherever and whenever they want.
• Cars must avoid scooters and pedestrians.
• Delivery trucks must dodge cars, scooters and pedestrians.
That could be useful to remember when the price of gasoline hits $8 a gallon here.
source: Auto News - subscription required