Driving in Italy - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 114

sanctuary at a local police station, you hit a brief stretch of straight road and the psycho-
killer behind you zooms past and disappears around the next bend.
In the United States no one drives like this except for the occasional unstable 18-year-old
who has just been dumped by his girlfriend and no longer cares whether he lives or dies. In
Tuscany , on the other hand, it's just your average soccer mom on her way to pick up the
kids. Not everyone drives this way—only about ninety percent of the population: people
on their way home from work, people on their way to work, people running errands, people
on their way to dinner or a movie. It's normal.
There's actually a good reason for driving this way. The roads are windy and there are no
specially designed passing lanes or pullouts. The straight-aways are few and far between
and often quite short. So, if you want to pass the driver in front of you, you need to stay
right behind him and be ready to make your move as soon as there's an opening. Had you
left a reasonable distance, by the time you closed the gap, your straight-away would be
gone and you would be heading around a blind curve before you got back in lane. So, you
see, tailgating aggressively is the only way to pass safely when you're driving on country
roads around Tuscany! It reminds me of one of Michael Crichton's novels, Eaters of the
Dead , where you begin the novel shuddering with revulsion at the barbaric practices of the
mysterious Norsemen yet find them totally reasonable by the time you reach the last page.
Less justifiable, perhaps, but no less prevalent on winding roads, is the practice of cutting
corners. If you ever drove along Highway 1 in California, the spectacular coastal road, you
would go up and down endless hills and around lots of hairpin turns. But you wouldn't find
another car over the white line and half way into your lane every time you took an inside
curve. In Italy it's standard operating procedure. Not to worry: the oncoming driver almost
always gets back into her lane as soon as she sees you, so there's rarely a head-on collision.
Cutting corners saves wear and tear on your tires, increases your mileage slightly, let's you
go a bit faster and minimizes centrifugal forces so you feel the curves a bit less. The split-
second timing you need to get back in lane keeps your reflexes sharp. And it adds a little
sizzle to the experience of driving, especially if you have a car that handles well. What's a
little risk of sudden death when weighed against all those big pluses?
When I actually found myself cutting corners one day as I was taking the kids to school,
I realized that I was definitely “going native”, and that it was high time to write this topic
before everything became normal for me, as it is for everyone else here…
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