Sicilian speed racers
Sicilians have their own unique (read: terrifying) way of driving, so, as a foreigner, whenever you get behind the wheel, you take your life in your hands.
Hire cars are pretty cheap here during the off-season - we pay about 5 euros a day for a small automatic, so we’ve rented one a few times, but as Stewart doesn’t have a credit card in his name, and additional drivers are expensive - I am always the driver (which is not ideal as my sense of direction can be somewhat lacking. I have been known to get lost going in a straight line.) When we collected our first hire car in Catania, the amount of damage it already had should have been a dead giveaway of what was to come. On the plus side, if a new addition was accidentally made, chances are it would go unnoticed.
Thankfully, I was able to get used to driving on the right (wrong) side of the road fairly quickly, but adjusting to the Sicilian way of driving has been another issue entirely! I have discovered that the general rule is that there are no rules, and you just have to go for it or get out of the way so others can.
Most Sicilians drive like they’ve stolen the car and are in a high-speed chase with police in hot pursuit. Speed limits seem to be a suggestion, and doing 130 km in a 50-zone appears perfectly acceptable. They seem to drive by their own unwritten road code whereby you drive up each others ass, waiting for an opportunity to overtake, not even a safe opportunity, just enough room to swing right out into the other lane, regardless if anyone is coming the other way, barely overtake then just as erratically, swing back into the correct lane, mere millimetres in front of the car you just overtook. It’s mental!
The roads themselves are either really good or terrible and littered with potholes. There are roundabouts everywhere (they even park on roundabouts!) and no footpaths, so pedestrians are another thing to beware of.
Regardless of the road conditions, drivers hoon past, weaving erratically in and out, with no indicator usage whatsoever. The odd driver that does indicate tends to leave it on, blinking for the next 10 minutes or so. This all seems to be perfectly acceptable behaviour, and everyone appears to be very tolerant of it. In fact, the ones that seem to be in the wrong are the ones that do drive in the centre of their own lane, at the advertised speed limit, leaving a safe following distance to the car in front, i.e., me!
If they’re not participating in their own Formula One race, they are doing the opposite and pootling along well below the speed limit on the hard shoulder! There is a distinct lack of road markings, so drivers simply make their own lanes. Often, a typical two-lane road becomes three lanes – two drivers on the outside, each driving on their respective hard shoulder, leaving the middle strip as an overtaking lane for traffic in both directions. The amount of times a car has crossed the centre line on a blind corner, COMING TOWARDS ME!!! It’s bloody heart-attack inducing!
