Getting behind the wheel in Italy isn’t an act of mobility; it’s a sociological experiment on the limits of human nerves. It is the ultimate proof that, once that pink slip of plastic is secured, the brain decides to take an early retirement, leaving the controls to a primal instinct fueled by arrogance and distraction.
There is a fundamental flaw in our civil system: the idea that a skill acquired at eighteen remains valid until the grave. We have decided that knowing how to parallel park a Fiat Panda in 1995 gives us the divine right to pilot a two-ton SUV in 2026, ignoring every single rule of civil coexistence. Nowadays, people don’t drive according to a code anymore; they just drive, dragged along by a dangerous inertia that mistakes the public road for their own living room hallway.
The “Ad Vitam” license is the original sin. It is an eternal concession that transforms the driver into an absolute monarch of their own cabin. Once the exam is passed (often thanks to the benevolence of an examiner who just wanted to clock out early), one feels authorized to reset their memory. Rules? Optional suggestions. Signs? Urban decorations meant to spice up the gray concrete. The road becomes a no man’s land where the only goal is to arrive three seconds earlier at the next red light, preferably without ever taking your eyes off your smartphone.
Nothing describes the failure of human empathy better than a highway traffic jam. You’re there, stuck for miles, the engine gurgling and the temperature rising. You think of a mechanical breakdown or a lane closure. But no. A multi-car pile-up has occurred. However, the bottleneck isn’t caused by the wreckage or the ambulances.
The jam is caused by the looky-loos. A horde of asphalt voyeurs slowing down almost to a halt to peer at the crumpled metal, the shattered glass, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of human remains just to have something “intense” to talk about at dinner. And this phenomenon doesn’t just affect those passing the accident. No, the real drama is the rubbernecking on the opposite side. People with no physical obstacle in front of them, driven only by a morbid desire to witness a catastrophic event.
It is a tragedy safari. We slow down to feed our egos with others’ misfortune, ignoring that this very slowdown will, in all probability, cause another pile-up a few hundred yards behind us. We are image predators, drivers who have traded prudence for the pornography of pain.
Let’s talk about the onboard tools. There is a lever, usually to the left of the steering wheel, that serves to indicate direction. It’s a revolutionary concept: letting others know where the hell you intend to go. Yet, for the modern driver, the turn signal is an optional feature with an unsustainable energy cost. Why signal a turn when you can simply swerve abruptly, relying on the reflexes (and brakes) of whoever is following you?
On the other hand, the right hand is perpetually occupied. Not by the gear stick, but by the phone. Look around at the next traffic light: you’ll see bowed heads, bluish glows illuminating vacant faces, fingers scrolling through feeds while the vehicle wanders aimlessly at twenty miles per hour. We have truck drivers reading newspapers spread across the steering wheel as if they were in an armchair, piloting metallic beasts capable of flattening a hatchback as if it were a soda can.
And then there are the crosswalks. In Italy, stripes on the road are perceived as a challenge, not a protection. There are those who don’t stop out of principle (“I’m in a hurry, you have legs”), and there are those who do worse: Car A stops politely to let a pedestrian cross, and Car B, frustrated by the “unexplained delay,” decides to overtake on the left at full throttle, heedless of the fact that in front of that stopped car there’s a mother with a stroller or an elderly person just trying to make it to the other side alive. It is attempted murder legalized by haste.
If this is the situation, the solution must be drastic. No more automatic renewals every ten years with an eye exam that consists of reading three letters off a chart while the doctor fills out his vacation forms.
Mandatory total re-examination every two years. You sit down, pick up the manual, and explain to me again what “yielding to the right” means. Then you get in the car with an examiner who hasn’t had dinner and is looking for an outlet for his rage. If you don’t know what the turn signal is for, your license goes into the shredder. If you don’t stop for pedestrians, you walk home. Perhaps, with the threat of having to study like a failing high schooler, someone will remember that the road is a shared space and not the set of Mad Max.
Would it be cruel? Certainly. Would it be inconvenient? Absolutely. But it’s the only way to clean the asphalt of those who consider safety a bureaucratic nuisance. Imagine the celestial silence of roads with 40% fewer cars, because the remaining 60% failed due to manifest cognitive incapacity.
Until we accept that driving is a technical privilege and not a birthright, we will continue to die for a “my phone slipped” or a missed signal at a roundabout. We are all nomads of a no man’s land made of asphalt and rage, where the only rule is the law of the strongest (or the most distracted).
The next time you find yourself stuck in traffic staring at an accident, ask yourself if what you’re seeing is a show or the mirror of your next mistake. And if by chance you see a lever on the left of the steering wheel, try moving it. A miracle might happen: someone might actually understand where you’re going.
But don’t get your hopes up. In Italy, the only thing that stays “Ad Vitam” is the arrogance.
