The Misfortunes of Bone: Neapolitan Driving

Before moving here to Naples, I was told about the crazy driving. The wife
of a good friend of mine in Bremerton said, "Driving in Naples is dangerous.
If you're not careful, you will die." Of course, just like everybody else,
all I had to do was Google, "crazy driving in Napoli" and peruse the videos.
Since being here, my favorite thing to watch are people backing up on
highways because they missed their exit, or backing off an exit because they
realized they took the wrong one.

Before I ventured out onto the streets here for the first time, my
supervisor at work gave me two pieces of advice: 1) all you have to do is
protect your front bumper and let everybody else worry about the rest of
you; 2) just realize that all the other drivers don't care. At the time,
neither of those made any sense.

Before telling about the first time on the road, I need to explain a couple
of other rules that I found out the hard way since then. First is that all
traffic signals, signs and lines are mere suggestions. For example, when
approaching a red light, you just check that nobody is coming and, if not,
you just keep going (notice, I didn't say anything about slowing down). The
flip side is that you treat a green light the same way. You approach a
green light, make sure nobody is running the red and, if not, you just keep
going. This rule especially applies to stop signs. Nope, nobody cares.

Speed limit signs are completely disregarded. I was told that when you are
passing somebody to keep an eye in your review mirror for flashing
headlights. Flashing headlights means somebody is coming up fast and
they're not going to slow down, so get over. But, what I wasn't told was
that there is always somebody going insanely slow in the right lane. For
example, my little Chevy Aveo sits real comfortable when I'm driving about
70 miles per hour (I haven't yet trained my brain to be thinking in metric).
I'll be passing vehicles and I see the flashing lights in the review mirror.
I have no idea how fast they're going, but by the time I get over, they pass
me like I'm at the front row of a NASCAR race (except the car is a wrecked
1990 Italian Punto). Then I have to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting
a car doing only 30. The true test to the speed limits came when I was
driving comfortable with a bunch of cars and passing several others. I
wasn't really paying attention to how fast we were all going until after I
realized that I had just passed an ambulance with its flashing blue lights.
They obviously don't care.

They also have 'anti' signs. For example when the speed-limit changes,
there are two signs; one with the new speed limit and one with the old speed
limit with a red line through it. The funniest one I've seen is on my way
to work; a blue sign on the side of the road says 'Napoli.' Ok, that makes
sense as it is a road that will take you into Naples. However, just below
this sign is another one that says 'Caserta' with a red line through it.
Caserta is a large town that is about 20 miles in the other direction and is
not anywhere along this highway. It's so random that I often consider the
scenarios that may have taken place that required the sign to be placed
there. Maybe they just had an extra Caserta sign and thought it might be
good to let people know that this road would not get you to Caserta. I'm
starting to think that they just don't care.

Lines on the road have less importance than signs do. If you are moving
slower than traffic, you are expected to drive on the shoulder. If you are
moving faster than the slowest cars but slower than the faster cars, it's ok
to straddle the dashed, center line in a two lane highway. If you are in
the right lane of a two lane highway and you are being passed on the left
just as a car enters the highway on your right, you are expected to move to
the middle of the road to make room for all three of you until somebody
decides who is faster (slowing down apparently is not an option). If you
are driving on a two way street and another car coming at you is being
passed by a third car (putting the passing car in your lane coming at you),
then you are the one that is expected to pull over and make room. They
don't care.

The Round-about is the last rule I'll cover here. This rule is closely
related to the line rule. There is a round-about at practically every
intersection and they have managed to even use the round-about in their
highway design (i.e. the off ramp leads you down onto a round-about that
goes under all the intersecting highways and you take the exit to whatever
highway you desire. Or, you can stay on the round-bout until you make up
your mind). I've decided that I really like these things as it practically
does away with turn signals. When entering the round-about, everybody is
entering the same direction, therefore no need to signal. Leaving the
round-about doesn't affect any other car coming on or the car behind you and
so there is no need to signal. There's no need to care.

The interesting thing about a typical intersection is that you'll have two
lanes enter a three lane round-about. Again, the locals disregard the
lanes. If you are in the right lane on the street entering a round-about
and your goal is to get off on the road that is directly on the other side,
you are expected to drive straight through the round-about. This
essentially has you cut straight across the three lanes in the round-about
to the inner circle, and then straight back across the same three lanes to
enter the right hand lane of the road you are exiting onto (see my picture).
Again, they don't care.

My first time on the road was leaving work. The first thing I come to is a
round-about in front of the airport. Sometimes it is packed and other times
it's 'not-so-packed.' This time, it was packed. I pulled up to the
round-about and stopped to wait patiently for an opening. The majority of
the traffic is moving left to right and from right to left, in and out of
the airport (remember they're cutting straight across the lanes through the
intersection). Of course, the cars behind me gave me a couple of short
beeps of their horns. Holding my breath and letting out the clutch, I stick
my front bumper right between two cars going perpendicular to the direction
I was going. Every orifice in my body puckered as I waited for the
inevitable bump on the left side of my car. It never came, just another
polite honk from the car I just cut off telling me not to stop. With more
confidence, I stuck my bumper between two other cars going in the other
direction as I made my way through the round-about. Then, I realized, that
my supervisor's first rule held true - protect your front bumper and
everyone else will worry about the rest of you. If you cut them off, they
don't care.

Even though the driving is crazy, there are just some things that nobody can
prepare you for. Last Friday I was driving into work and I noticed a car
pulled into the triangle between an off ramp and the highway. As I got
closer, a man was getting out of the car and walked right to the white line
of the highway, turned around with his back to the road and put his hands on
his knees. I thought he was going to vomit or something. But, just as I
passed by, I realized that his pants were dropped down to his mid thigh. He
stayed in this position until he disappeared in my rear view mirror. I can
honestly say that I have no idea what he was doing, but the imagination can
probably do a good job of providing several possibilities. All I can say is
that he obviously didn't care.