Cars, horns and driving

In Rome Smart cars are everywhere and they look great. When I win lotto, I will park one in my driveway. They are the only car that can legally park two cars in one designated car spot. Some of the ways they park cars in Rome is most ingenious. Saw a smart car parked nose to kerb between two parked cars. In Italy in ten days, we saw nothing bigger than comodore wagon, and maybe only one or two of those. I also like the Fiat Multipla and there were a lot of these in Rome. We rode in a Taxi Multipla in Rome. Road rules in Rome do exist, not well demonstrated. Crossing the road in Rome you look both ways at a pedestrian crossing and cross confidently and the cars will stop. You cannot wait for the cars to stop, they never will.

As we crossed the border into Austria from Italy, suddenly 4WD's and station wagons became more common. In Paris we also saw many smart cars. In the UK only a few Smart cars were spied. In Italy we were surrounded by motorbikes of every description.

On the Amalfi Coast we saw plenty of normal sized passenger buses going up and down the coast road. The road is so narrow that often there was only a centimetre or two between the buses. At every corner they would honk their horns, often we saw a chain of cars backing up to let buses through.

Both the bus drivers and the car drivers were very patient. I was sure that Italian buses would be the only vehicles in the world that wear out their horns, until we went to Paris. After the French won the semi final in the world cup soccer, they played songs with their horns up and down our street till all hours.

Crossing the road in Paris is also scary. At lights they will stop, unlike Rome. If you cross at a zebra crossing the cars will drive around you. We were advised that we should just cross and not change speed and we will cross safely. The rule is the car has to avoid you by 1.5m. We saw a lot of cars that shaved that distance to the limit and many more who got shirty because you were slowing them down. Crossing the road in Singapore is very civilised, as is the driving. The crossing lights actually count down how much time you have left. The drivers stay in their lanes and obey speed limits and other signs, much as they do in Austria.

While in England we hired a car for 19 days. I thought we were getting a Renault Laguna, however we had a Fiat Croma. The car was a manual that required a lot of strength to operate, had no operating manual, nor where we given any operational overview. It had a huge design fault from our point of view. The hand break was situated in front of the console between the two front seats. To pull on the handbreak was awkward as the console hight meant that you had to turn your hand 90 degrees to the right to grasp the handbreak. It was comfortable apart from that. When we were parked behind a Laguna at Stirling Castle one day I checked out the console/handbreak arrangement and it was very similar!!!

Here is the only photo we have of our hire car.



We did not attempt driving in Italy or France, we know our limitations. However driving in England is also interesting. Again we did not drive in London although J assures me that I would be more than capable, I am happy to remain ignorant of that skill. Driving on the motorway is easy and after just 12 days or so I found the cruise control which I love for highway driving. I found the rear windscreen wipers after 14 days!!! Driving through Somerset and the Lake District (and a lot of other places) a lot of roads have narrow bits that are one way only. Sometimes they have a sign indicating who has right of way and sometimes they don't!! As we drove along the front at Hastings we often drove on the other side of the road because of the cars parked. It was difficult to negotiate, when a truck or bus was coming the other way.