Holiday in Tuscany: 8. Driving in Tuscany – Chasing the limit
Speed limits in Tuscany are a bit like their road signs (see another Holiday in Tuscany post): rather chaotic and not always there for the convenience of drivers. And they are also a bit extreme: from very high (the official highway speed limit is 130km/h) to extremely low (I saw 20km/h near road work – 20? do they really expect people to comply with that?). But maybe this regulatory exuberance is just another aspect of the legendary Italian pathos 
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Since the only stretches of highway we encountered were around Firenze (speed limit 100km/h if I remember correctly), and between Firenze and Siena where the speed limit is 90km/h because of the bad road conditions (see the above mentioned Holiday in Tuscany post), I don’t really have any experience with the high end of the speed limit, I can only say something about the low end. And at the low end I found Italian roads to be much like the Belgian ones.
In Belgium, speed limits are sometimes ridiculously low, especially around road work. Invariably, when road work is happening on a highway and one of the lanes is closed the speed limit is lowered from the normal 120km/h to 70km/h and sometimes even 50km/h, while conditions may well permit much higher speeds to be safely used. On secondary roads you often see 30km/h being indicated, even though the road may be almost completely unobstructed.
And it doesn’t even take special conditions such as road work. On connections between two highways, where there’s always some bends in the road involved, that same 70km/h limit is often set, while you may well be able to go through the curve comfortably at 90km/h or even 100km/h.
The result is, of course, that no one takes these speed limit signs seriously, they are very often simply not respected. Currently there is road work being done on the E19 between Brussels and Antwerp, where over a stretch of a few kilometers the three lanes are slightly narrowed and a little offset to the right of their normal position. The speed limit is set to 70, while I have crossed that stretch often while everyone (and I mean everyone) was doing over 100, without any serious danger.
The same applies to Tuscany, where off-highway speed limits are often unrealistically low, so that only a minority of drivers seems to respect them. Except of course for tourists, but that may have more to do with the beautiful countryside or their trying to navigate unfamiliar territory . Locals however, who know the roads by heart, tend to go much faster than the limit – I often had one sticking to my rear bumper until there was a long-enough stretch of straight road for him to overtake me 
. The result is that after a while, when you become more familiar with the roads yourself, you tend to just blend in with traffic and simply stop taking note of speed limit signs.
That can lead to some awkward surprises though. One day, speeding along merrily on a long drive towards the coast, I had just passed a 50km/h speed limit sign when I saw a car that had been behind me for some time (maintaining the same speed as me) suddenly slow down when passing that sign. This immediately made me suspicious (yes, that’s how bad it is in Italy: when traffic slows down to the speed limit you become suspicious ), so I instinctively did the same. And sure enough, a little further down the road there was a speed-radar. Lucky for me I had a local behind me who knew about it .
That was the only speed-radar I encountered in the countryside, but there are many more of them on the highways around Firenze. This gave me quite a scare a few times when, blending in with traffic, making the same speed as everyone else, I suddenly had to hit the brakes because everyone around me slowed down abruptly for a speed-radar hidden just around the bend. Really scary.
And really stupid as well, because everyone knows where these radars are located (and in Italy they are huge boxes – can’t really miss ‘em ), so no one is crazy enough to speed past them. Instead everyone slows down, and 100 meters or so further down the road you see a big black cloud of exhaust smog, as everyone is accelerating en masse back to the ‘normal’ speed.
In general, unrealistically low speed limits like they are used in Belgium and Italy are counter-productive I guess, because they only lead to widespread speed violations anyway. So they contribute little to road safety. Even worse, because they are unrealistically low, they provide no really useful information about which speeds are safe in that particular location. They stop having any real meaning – which is exactly why no-one respects them.
It would be much more productive to have realistic speed limit signs that provide useful and accurate information about the road they are on, so that you at least know when you approach a curve what maximum speed should be respected to safely go through it – you can always go slower if you don’t feel comfortable. That would be a real contribution to road safety, and would have much more effect, because no-one (except perhaps a few crazies) would be tempted to violate the limits because that would lead to an unsafe driving condition – or would simply not be comfortable anymore.
A realistic policy like that would lead to real ‘respect’ for the speed limit (in the full sense of the word, not just in the practical sense), which may well have a positive effect on people’s attitudes towards the law in general. Because psychologically speaking such unrealistically low speed limits have a ‘belittling’ effect – you feel as if you are treated like a child that cannot be trusted and has to be over-controlled. Setting realistic limits would be more respectful towards drivers, since it treats them like normal trustworthy grown-up people (the message behind the signs becomes one of ‘information’ rather than ‘control’). And everyone knows that the best way to get respect is to be willing to give it…
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Tags: driving, speed limit, Travel, Tuscany
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