On the Road
by: Bill Oetinger 9/1/2001
How's my driving?
This column is as much about driving as it is about cycling, but there definitely is a cycling subtext, so hang in there and we'll eventually get to it.
I've recently returned from a wonderful three-week cycling and driving tour in Italy. Based on what I experienced there, I'd like to make some observations on the behavior of European drivers, and how that behavior compares to that of their American counterparts.
Before getting into it, I need to make the usual disclaimer: these are only my opinions--not statements of fact--and they are based on a fairly minute sampling: just three weeks of travel. However, the observations from this trip are supplemented by earlier stints of living in England and cycling and driving throughout Northern Europe. They also reflect many conversations I have had on this subject with others who have lived and traveled in Europe...both Americans and Europeans.
In three weeks, I logged about 600 miles by bike, split between ten rides, mostly, but not exclusively, on beautiful backroads. I drove our rented cars close to 2000 miles, on everything from the streets of Rome and Milan to the high speed autostrada to dinky little backroads. A further disclaimer: my sampling extends only through Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland. I'm assuming that a large percentage of the drivers I was seeing during this peak Summer holiday season weren't even Italian, but French, German, Swiss, Austrian, etc. Also, I am assured, especially by Northern Italians, that south of Rome, things are much more chaotic and free-for-all than what we saw in the north.
Prior to this, my first visit to Italy, I enjoyed a colorful preconception of what Italian drivers would be like: in a word, crazy...driving with their horns, gesturing rudely, running red lights with wild abandon, and in general behaving like testosterone-crazed maniacs. I think this is an image shared by most Americans who have not been there...a smug and patronizing image promoted by the American media. Now, having been there, I'd have to say this crazy Italian-driver stereotype is little more than an ethnic slur, perpetuated, like most ethnic slurs, to make us all feel better about ourselves at the expense of the other guy.
What I saw seems to be almost a polar opposite of the stereotype. It appears that most Italian drivers are not only disciplined and reasonably law abiding (and they do stop at stop lights), they are actually very competent and skillful. It's true that they drive faster than we usually do here, and they overtake and tailgate in ways that will at first take your breath away. When I initially observed this driving style, I wanted to describe it as aggressive, but Webster's defines "aggressive" as "prone to starting fights or quarrels," and that is exactly what their behavior isn't. Finally, I decided to describe their driving with the word Italians use to describe it: "prepotente," (forceful).
Italian drivers--and most European drivers--seem to apply the vehicle code in a pragmatic and circumstantial way, rather than a literal way. They pass when it's safe to do so, for instance, regardless of whether there is a double line on the road, and they drive at whatever speed is prudent rather than whatever is posted. When you couple this independent, proactive approach to driving with narrow, twisting roads clogged with hoards of other cars, trucks, motorbikes, tractors, and cyclists, it follows that the drivers are going to have to be more alert and more skillful. It's simply a matter of survival: pay attention or suffer the consequences.
In the United States, and in particular in the wide open spaces of the west, we have for generations enjoyed the luxury of acres of elbow room to pilot our big land yachts down the highway. Those long and empty roads allow many of us to drive in a something of a somnolent haze...one arm draped out the window and the other flopped lazily over the wheel, while we daydream and gaze at the scenery. That's why we have Botts Dots on the lanes: to wake us up when our minds or our vehicles start to wander. (They don't use Botts Dots in Europe as much. I don't think they feel the need to protect the drivers from themselves in the same way that CalTrans does here.)
Just in case you think I'm out to lunch with these ideas, let me quote you a passage from the Lonely Planet Guidebook, regarding driving in Italy: "You soon realise that what at first seems like clueless indiscipline is, in fact, the height of driving skill. When you begin to see how traffic flows, how drivers seem to have a sixth sense for what is happening around them and so generally proceed without having accidents, you begin to understand that, actually, these guys are good..."
But there is more to the difference than just being alert and skillful. After interacting with Italian drivers (and presumably, other European drivers) for three weeks, the single most interesting characteristic about their driving--as I see it--is this: behind that focused and forceful driving is an almost total lack of aggression; of anger, hostility, or grievance. They may drive fast and con brio, but they do so without a chip on their shoulder.
The entire phenomenon of road rage seems alien and preposterous. Dozens of times every day, drivers execute bold passes, split lanes, cut one another off, and tailgate in ways that would almost certainly result in flipped digits, furious screaming, and horn riding in California. But in Italy, the incidents are like water off a duck's back. People seem to accept that we're all on the road together, sharing a finite amount of space, and all of us are doing the best we can to get from A to B quickly and simply. There is none of that self-righteous indignation at having been done out of our space in line, or that the other guy somehow took unfair advantage. Motorcycles and motorscooters routinely--in their thousands--split lanes and proceed to the front of every red light queue, but no one suggests that these "cheaters" should be doored. Horns are used frequently, but usually to convey information: "Look out...I'm here." Rarely is a horn blared in anger, and even more rarely does one see a rude gesture from a driver, and this in a culture where dramatic hand gestures are an integral, essential component of language. There is no sense of driving as a form of one-upsmanship or counting coup. Put simply: they're cooperating. What a concept!
In contrast, what I see in California is fractious and irritable drivers cherishing a precious sense of entitlement to their "space." Many of us seem to feel as if we are granted by royal charter an inviolate zone around our cars...a sort of psychic bubble of protection and privacy and convenience into which other drivers (and pedestrians and cyclists) intrude at their peril. Witness the bumper stickers that say, "If you can read this, you're traveling too close!" or bluntly, "Back off!" or the witty, "How"s my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT." You will not see any such bumper stickers in Italy. In fact, you will almost never see a bumper sticker of any kind. Using the bumper of one's automobile to tell the world our opinions on various issues is a uniquely American conceit. In Italy, they're too busy paying attention to traffic to have time for reading epigrammatic mind farts on one another's bumpers.
This sense of our cars as fortresses finds its ultimate expression in that modern American blight: the Sport Utility Vehicle...the auto as Empire Battle Cruiser, and the bigger, the better! Marketing studies have shown that SUV owners tend toward an aggressive, defensive, angry, defiant, hostile, uncooperative mindset while behind the wheels of their big rigs...exactly the opposite of the accommodating, improvisational, cooperative mindset in Europe. You see very few SUVs in Europe. Most cars are small, light, fast, and agile. They have to be, with narrow, twisting roads and tons of traffic. The occasional SUV looks as out of place as a hippo in a horse race.
Oh sorry! I didn't mean to get sidetracked into an SUV rant. And you certainly don't need to own a battle wagon to drive with a pugnacious, self-righteous attitude in this country. Isn't it strange that the motto we all learn as young drivers in this country is, "Drive defensively"...as if we were engaged in some kind of military exercise? I understand why we teach this, but wouldn't it make more sense in the long run to teach our new drivers to "drive cooperatively"?
So anyway...what does all this have to do with cycling? Quite a bit. We've all read an article or two stating that bicycles are treated differently in Europe...that they are an accepted and respected part of the transportation mix, tolerated and assimilated more or less seamlessly into the traffic flow. Now, having experienced this first hand, I can affirm not only that this is true, but that it is more deeply rooted in the culture than I had suspected. It's not a subtle difference at all, but a profoundly different mindset altogether.
In Italy, where bicycle racing is pretty much the national sport (along with soccer), cyclists are in many cases more than tolerated: they are celebrated and saluted. Even old recreational pluggers like me will come in for a share of cheery good will from motorists and pedestrians. However, many drivers will be decidedly prepotente around cyclists. They will zip up right behind you, waiting just off your wheel for a chance to pass, and then they may pass in tight spots, leaving you not a lot of elbow room. It can be disconcerting at first. You'll either get used to riding in close proximity to cars and trucks, or you'll find another place to ride...Montana, maybe. (In Italy, riders in a group seldom call out "car back!" because on almost all roads, there is always a car back.)
But the good news is that the close proximity to cars is mitigated by the generally excellent skills of the drivers. Their passes may be close, but they're quick and clean... models of efficient road-sharing. I don't know this for anything like a fact, but based on what I saw, I will wager that there are considerably fewer of the incidents we see here of cyclists being taken out by clueless drivers...the kind who turn right or left into the path of a rider and then claim they never saw them. Italian drivers rarely appear clueless. The few we saw who looked inept or befuddled were probably hapless tourists like us.
Best of all, interactions between drivers and cyclists are completely and utterly lacking in any of the antagonism that animates so many of our encounters here. You will not see the Italian equivalent of a redneck in a pick-up lumbering up behind you and laying all over the horn while yelling, "Git da fook off da road!" No motorist is going to assume he has a higher or prior right to that bit of road occupied by the cyclist up ahead. He will deal with the cyclist in the same way an American driver might deal with a piece of farm equipment in the road: remove the foot from the gas, apply it to the brake, and wait for the right moment to pass. No grievance. No upsets. No angst. No class warfare. Just two road users figuring out how to coexist. Sounds so obvious, doesn't it?
We all hate those nasty confrontations with outraged, idiot drivers. But while we hate them and complain about them to anyone who'll listen, sometimes I think we're almost resigned to the occasional bouts of bully-boy harassment, as if they were an unpleasant but inevitable consequence of riding, like potholes, headwinds, and rain storms. After riding in Europe, I can tell you: it doesn't have to be this way.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net