Been there, done that, got the t-shirt

Having lived in Italy for a number of years, I can attest to how bad Italians drive. Apparently, the Italian government now has decided that, maybe, enough is enough.

As I often pointed out when driving in Italy, there are no traffic laws, only suggestions. Speed limits are for sissies, the police are a joke and nobody thinks twice about passing other cars in anyway they can. While I lived in Catania, I used to have to drive more than an hour both ways to get to work along two-lane roads. I used to describe my commute as driving in a NASCAR race/demolition derby while you passed other cars at 160 kms/hour (100 miles/hour) with another car riding your bumper. In all the places in Europe where I lived, Italy had the worse drivers.

However, I liked driving in Italy since I used to drive turbo-diesel powered, manual transmission, two-door cars. Sticking a turbo-diesel in a small car (think Fiat or Opel) with a manual transmission makes the car fly (or at least 160 kms/hour). When I got back to the US, I had a real hard time at first to try and not drive like an Italian. I have pretty well gotten back in the US way of driving, but every once in a while, I forget where I am and drive like my name is Giovanni and I'm yelling at the driver next to me, "Tu sei un cornuto! Vaffanculo!"