The two most exciting ways to experience Roman life are to rent either an automobile or a motor scooter, called a Vespa (wasp) in Italian. Make sure your insurance is up to date. Then try your hand at driving on the next visit.
There are many adjectives for Roman traffic and drivers. They include words such as horrifying, terrifying, insane, and life threatening. Is it just a coincidence that accidente, besides referring to an incident, can also mean damn?
Leaving aside the madcap pace of cars and scooters on any of the main thoroughfares in Rome (and most of the smaller ones as well), there are some interesting complications.
You may experience the tendency of Roman drivers to carry the rule about a car on the right having the right-of-way to its ultimate absurdity. Image a very large circular piazza with four main arteries entering around the perimeter. Each carries two or more tightly packed lanes of traffic. Picture a small pedestal in the center.
One quarter of the drivers in each lane wants to exit by the next street to the right; one quarter wants the street directly opposite; one quarter is going all the way around to the street on their left; and the rest are simply lost.
Traffic has come to a standstill. At the very center of the piazza, four cars are stalled. The nose of each points at the driver’s side of the next car. Each driver insists as the car on the right, he has the right-of-way.
It also is possible that you will see cars attempting to make left turns from the far right lane. This maneuver may succeed through sheer aggressiveness, There is an explanation for this, at least for elder drivers, that goes beyond the absolutely fearlessness and resistance to driving restrictions of most Roman drivers. Until the 1950’s, the law required anyone making a left turn to first get in the far right lane of traffic, signal, then cut across. For a right turn, the reverse was true. The law changed, but generations of drivers found it hard to adapt.
In earlier years, nighttime added a new dimension to Roman driving. Rome had perhaps a quarter as many streetlights as any comparable American city. Using headlights in central areas except in emergencies or when approaching blind corners, was illegal. When coming up on cross-streets, at which stopping to check other traffic would interfere with the headlong progression of the vehicle, drivers would flick their headlights on and off. The light, reflecting off opposing buildings, supposedly alerted drivers coming from the right or left to possible danger.
Despite the appearance to many Americans of a city of insane drivers, there endures a wonderful tradition. At some of the larger intersections, for example Piazza Venezia, stands a tall figure on a pedestal, clothed in white in summer and black in winter. He is Law Incarnate. His motions as he directs traffic would fit any ballet. He is imperturbable, never angry. He is patient with jams, a genius at unsnarling them. He may be reviled, but never within his hearing. He is the one bit of sanity in a mad, mad world.
Once a year Romans redeem themselves. At Christmas time, people take presents to pile around the officers at the base of their pedestals. You realize the pretended dislike and even apparent loathing was really just all part of the same game of getting from one place to another in the most daring way possible in the Eternal City.
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