Yesterday morning it rained on my way to work.  Not particularly heavy, but it would have made the roads potentially greasy.  For that reason I tend to be a bit slower, try to give myself more time for braking by positioning myself further from the car in front, etc.

But why, I ask, that when it rains, people do the strangest of things.  I mean, it’s as if it’s not raining when they pull out in front of you.  This also happens when it snows.

To be fair, this is exactly the same as in the UK – it’s not the Italians being worse.’  But it’s not only the drivers; pedestrians do it too.  They’ll see you coming but because it’s raining and they don’t want to get so wet they’ll just run across the road right in front of you.  You can’t trust them so I have no choice but to be slower and watch them even more carefully than usual.

Bikers (motorised or otherwise) are also bad.  Although the sight of a cyclist holding an umbrella over their head as the cycle along or weave in and out of traffic still amuses me.

My conclusion – all people are mad!

My friend, A has recently had a number of fines for crossing lights on red.  Here, we don’t quite have the same system as in the UK.  In the UK the sequence is green – amber – red – red & amber – green.  Here it’s just green – amber – red – green.  And, in spite of the signs (which make me laugh each time I see them), to the Italians it would seem that the roads ARE a race track and a formula one race track at that!

So, it is common to cross the traffic lights if they have just turned red because the people who will be green-to-go in a moment are, almost certainly, not green-to-go right now.

In the last few years, they have been installing cameras at traffic lights to catch those guilty people who cross on red.  And it seems that many Italians are getting caught out.  Unfortunately, A cannot really afford any more (in terms of the points on his licence).  He calls them hidden ‘killer’ cameras.  All I can think of is the Terminator films.

What’s worse is that he was driving his girlfriend’s car at the time of the last photo and she is always berating him when he goes through a light that has just turned red.  So, he’s in the difficult position of not being able to tell her but having to tell her.  I don’t envy him.

And just as an aside.  Irony.  Truly the ability to say/write something that means the opposite of what is said/written for the purposes of humour.  Often confused with sarcasm where the ironic is done purely for mockery or as a means of conveying contempt.  I like to think that I have developed a good sense of being ironic and try hard not to be sarcastic (unless the person really deserves it!)