Is it safe to drive in Italy?

Driving in a foreign country can be liberating, and frankly terrifying. When should you surrender the wheel to an expert?

Rush hour in Kolkata. Picture: Getty Images

Reading Ricky French’s driving tips for T+L’s cover story took me back to my own winter escapades along Canada’s Icefields Parkway many moons ago. Unknown to many readers, Ricky has a secret skill set; he can drive anything from a forklift to an eight-tonne truck.

I’m not so over-qualified but I do recall the absolute wonder of that route, of the strange quiet of driving on snow, and the feeling that the tyres on our rent-a-wreck jalopy might suddenly lose traction.

There were climbers clinging impossibly to frozen waterfalls. And those glorious mountains – words fail me. My husband and I kept stopping to take photos, until we noticed the signs advising against such stupidity. “Whoops, we’re in avalanche territory.”

Driving in a foreign country can be liberating, and frankly terrifying. For Aussies, there’s the initial rewiring of neural pathways needed to set a course on the “wrong” side of the road (bonus points for manual transmission). One of the greatest achievements of my life will always be successfully navigating Paris and the chaos of the Bastille monument roundabout, twice.

But there are some countries where I gladly surrender the driving to the experts. In Vietnam, highway motorists dance a crazy fast-paced tango, one hand on the wheel, weaving in and out of obstacles regardless of lane markings, the other hand providing a non-stop soundtrack of horn. China, ditto.

This week I asked my old pub-quiz buddy Stephen Corby, motoring writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine, about his wide-ranging overseas driving experiences. Perhaps predictably, he cites the joy of zooming along a German autobahn at 300km/h. But his favourite destination to get behind the wheel is, of all places, Italy, which he describes as “a country that does have laws about speeding, but prefers to ignore them with a dismissive shove of chin and expressive wave of the hands”.

The scenery is gorgeous, the coffee as powerful as a Bugatti and the locals simply adore cars.

“Italians love driving … Every single one of them believes they could have made it to Formula One with a touch more luck, and they treat every mountain pass, back road and autostrada as if it is a race track waiting to be tamed,” he tells me via email.

In terms of places he would dearly love never to drive again, it is a draw between India and Egypt – “two places that prove the existence of chaos theory”. He claims to have spent an infuriating three hours at an intersection in Cairo as “a million angry scooters and 200 cows” approached from all directions. At the end of his tether, he nearly jumped out and walked away.

Them’s the brakes.

Do you prefer to drive overseas, use a chauffeur or take public transport? Leave a comment below or email [e-mail]