The Reckless Road to Rome

More than 2,000 years ago, Roman traffic--the noise and tangle of horses, carriages, pedestrians, lurching palanquins --so beset Julius Caesar that he angrily decreed that no loaded wagons could pass through the city by daylight. In these same unwidened streets, 250,000 cars, buses, motorcycles, Vespas and Lambrettas now beset lesser men than Caesar. Untrammeled by any of the usual conventions of the motorized world, Italians mount their vehicles like men possessed and ride off to bellowing, bumper-to-bumper battle.

For in Italy the law of the road has been the law of the jungle. Last year police watched helplessly as the exuberant drivers of Italy's 1,400,000 automobiles piled up in 200,000 serious accidents and killed 7,145 people--a death rate, considering the per capita number of vehicles, nine times that of the U.S. Romans jested that a driver could be jailed only for rape or failing to yield to the man on the right. Italy had no speed limits in towns or out, no right to suspend licenses, no rules about passing or sticking closely to the right side of the road. One driver killed five people in five separate accidents and never even paid a heavy fine. Pope Pius XII himself used to urge on his chauffeur with a stop watch, clocking his Cadillac runs from the Vatican to rural Castel Gandolfo. Usually, the smaller the car the more audacious the driver, who is given to cutting in and out of behemoth trucks, passing on curves, busily proving that no man is his superior simply because he has more horses under the hood.

Last week, in the first major attempt since Caesar to rein Roman recklessness on the road. Minister of Public Works Giuseppe Togni put in force a new traffic code. Its 146 articles require Italian drivers to observe 30 m.p.h. speeds in cities, stop and look before turning onto state highways, make right turns only from the right lane, stop if their vehicle hits a pedestrian (under the old law hit-and-run drivers could avoid being held without bail if they successfully hid out for the first 24 hours before reporting an accident). It also subjects them to heavier fines and possible loss of license after three offenses.

Though Italian drivers immediately grumbled ("Our licenses are now at the mercy of the bureaucracy," headlined 77 Giorno), the new laws are admittedly far short of what is needed. Licensing of Vespa and motorcycle drivers, compulsory insurance, automobile inspections, are still only a dream. The most glaring omission is any speed limit for Italy's open-country autostrade. Recently, on the Milan-Bergamo superhighway, a policeman noticed two English tourists, their Austin parked on the shoulder, waving and cheering as Italian cars hurtled by. He stopped and asked them what they were doing. "Why, cheering the race, of course. Isn't this the Mille Miglia?"

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