Driving in Italy

The rules of the road for driving in Italy

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Most Italian drivers are much more aggressive than American ones. Be prepared, and leave the road rage at home.

Italian road rules are similar enough to American ones that you'll get by fine. There are, however, some important differences.

Obey all road signs and drive defensively and carefully

Assume the other drivers have a better idea of what they're doing than you do, and take your hints from them.

Keep to the right

In case of breakdown
Call tel. 803-116 to get the services of the Automobile Club d'Italia, or ACI (www.aci.it)—the Italian equivalent to AAA. Even if you are not a member, you can still call them 24/7/265 in case of emergency or breakdown by the side of the road. You will, of course, have to pay for the tow and any mechanical service.

While we're at it, here are more emergency numbers:
Police (carabinieri): 112
Ambulance: 118
Fire: 115
Yes, you do drive on the right-hand side of the road in Italy, but that's not waht I'm talking about. I'm talking about keeping to the right (slow) lane on multi-lane highways. Do not just cruise along in the left lane on a four-lane highway.

In Italy, the left lane—or fast lane—truly is only for passing. The only people who cruise in it are folks in Mercedes, BMWs, or Ferraris who are flying along at well over 100 mph and will squash you like a bug if they come across you in their lane.

Similarly, on a two-lane road, if someone comes up from behind and flashes their lights at you, it's a signal for you to slow down and drive more on the shoulder so that they can pass you more easily (two-lane roads here routinely become three cars wide).

Obey the speed limit — Seriously

European road sign for Speed Limit European road sign for End Speed Limit Zone
The number in a red circle is
the speed limit. The number
with a grey slash through it
indicates where the speed limit
zone ends—and a new one
will begin. » More road signs.I know: obvious one, right? Problem is, there's this persistant myth that there are no speed limits in Europe. This is untrue. (Well, except for certain stretches of the German Autobahn.)

Italian roads do, indeed, have speed limits. And yes, these limits are (now) enforced.

Except when posted otherwise, the following speed limits apply:

130 kmph (80 mph) is the speed limit on highways in Italy.
110 kmph (68 mph) is the speed limit on non-major highways outside of major urban areas in Italy.
90 kmph (56 mph) is the speed limit on local roads in Italy.
50 kmph (31 mph) is the speed limit in urban areas in Italy (see note below).
- Note that the definition of "urban areas" often extends to the stretch of highway passing a small town, especially around its exits, so keep your eyes peeled for signs indicating lowered speed limits, even on the highways.

Until recently, these limits are widely ignored and rarely enforced—not that this knowledge helped if a cop did decide to issue you a ticket, or you were stopped by a carabiniere (that's a member of the national police force, which is a branch of the military and hence carries automatic weapons and hence should be obeyed immediately and at all times).

However, notice I wrote "until recently" speed limits were rarely enforced. Thanks to speed trap cameras, this is no longer the case. Just in the past few years, Italians have gotten way more aggressive about issuing tickets—for speeding, parking, and even not wearing a seatbelt (which, by law, you must do). Italy's reputation as a nation of scofflaws may actually be starting to change.

The fact that an automatic camera can sense a speeder, snap a photograph of your license plate, send a message to a computer with the data, then automatically issue you a ticket—even if, while this is happening, every cop in town is just sitting around the station eating the proverbial doughnut—means if you speed, expect to get a fine in the mail.

No, you can't just ignore a ticket. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, any unpaid tickets will eventually find their way to you via the car rental agency, which will merely provide the local municipality with your address, then automatically charge your credit card a whopper of a fee for their troubles (on the order of $80–$90). Several months later, you will get the fine in the mail—a fine you can only pay by internaitonal bank wire transfer, for which your bank may charge anywhere from $TK to $70.

I am totally serious about this. In 2010, I had to pay more than $300 in fines and fees for unwittingly going a whopping 10 mph over the speed limit on an empty secondary road in the interior hinterlands of Sardegna 11 months earlier.

Be especially careful about parking tickets. Italian cops have gotten brutal about ticketing (and even towing) illegally parked cars.

Get ready to do math

Everything's measured in kilometers here (mileage and speed limits). For a rough conversion, one kilometer equals a weensy bit more than 0.6 miles—so just divide the amount in half and add back ten percent (in other words 120km in miles would be half—60 miles—plus ten percent of 120—or 12 miles—for a total of 72 miles).

Prepare your wallet for highway robbery at the pump.

That gas may look reasonably priced, but remember the price is per liter, not per gallon. Gas in Italy is preposterously pricey, costing roughly $6 to $8 per gallon—no foolin'. Budget accordingly when deciding between taking a train or renting a car.

The AA (www.theaa.com)—the British version of AAA, not the group that helps alcoholics—provides an updated monthly gas chart, downloadable in Word format, showing you how much gas costs per liter (er, "litre") in countries across Europe. Remember to multiply that by 3.8 to get gallons (or just guesstimate by multiplying by four) and then by the current exchange rate to get a sense of the going rate per gallon in dollars—and a sense of just how insanely expansive gas is in Italy. Once you discover that, for example, petrol in Italy runs roughly $6.60 a gallon, maybe you'll understand why Europeans think we're crazy to complain about the price of gas in the U.S.

Get a good map

Italy maps
Michelin Italy Map	Rick Steves' Italy Map	Michelin Italy Tourist & Motoring Atlas	Rough Guide Italy Map

Save some of the headaches and trouble of finding your way by knowing where you're going in the first place. Simple, no?

Also, directional road signs in Italy are funny. Sometimes they do mention route numbers, but very rarely (or at least, not with the regularity one is used to driving in the U.S. or Canada). Knowing the route you want is useful, but not nearly so useful as knowing what towns are on that route. This is because road signs at a turnings will point toward towns that lie in each direction.

Here's the tricky part. You never know which towns it will mention. Sometimes it will be just one town, or a group of two to three that all lie in that direction, or sometimes a whole list of a half-dozen.

More confusingly, you never know whether the town(s) listed will be: (a) the next blip of a hamlet the road passes through, (b) the next major town down that road, (c) the provincial capital down the line a ways, (d) the name of the town (could be big, could be tiny) that sits at the next intersection of another major (or maybe minor) road, (e) the regional capital 100 miels down the pike, (f) some other major city 250 miles away, or (g) Rome.

This is where the map comes in. Take a good look at the next road you need, and memorize the names of all those towns lying along it that might potentially be on the signs (the next dot or two on the map, the first big dot down the road a ways, the really big dot at the end of the road, etc.)

[In a further wrinkle, sometimes the next big town down the road will not appear on the signs at all, and this is out of spite. I kid you not. If two neighborhing towns or cities are historical rivals, with several hundreds years of mutual enmity seething between them, they will sometiems refuse to acknowledge each other's existence on road signs. For example, it was only recently that Lucca and Pisa—which are only 16 miles apart—started posting road signs on how to get from one to the other. Of course, the municipalities can only ignore one another on signs under their direct control (usually local and provincial roads). This doesn't stop locals from blacking out their rival's name when it appears on signs for regional or state roads. Welcome to Italy!]

Don't be a temptress/temptor

Never leave anything visible in the car when you park it. When you check into a hotel, take all of your luggage in with you, even if you won't need it. This advice goes doubly in Naples.

Bring your driver's license (and the International Driving Permit)

Bring your driver's license, of course, but if you do plan to drive in Italy, you should also bring an International Driver's Permit in addition to your regular driver's license. This document—which pretty much just translates the data on your home license into several languages—costs $10 from any AAA office (you don't have to be a member).

Speaking of AAA (www.aaa.com), not only do its offices provide one-stop shopping for International Drivers Permits and traveler's checks, they also have some free maps and travel info on every contry in the world. These materials are really not that great for Italy (or anywhere in Europe), but they are decent for an overview.

Get road intel from the ACI

You can call the ACI (Automobile Club d'Italia, sort of like America's AAA or Britain's AA; www.aci.it) at tel. 06-491-716 for information (in English) on: "road and weather conditions, highway tolls, ferries, tourist itineraries, mileage distances, customs formalities, currency, and automotive procedures."