Italians Don’t Like Me

Just “nipped” down to Lignano to pick up Sarah from her language camp. A mere 550km per way.

I was actually looking forward to this great little trattoria we found there, La Vecchia Finanza, but it wasn’t to be: thousands of mad Italians decided to meet up on the freeway and attempt to kill me in the most violent manner possible.

They’re quite cunning those people: in order to ensure that they can catch you, they slow you down by insisting you pay a couple of Euros every now and then. It took me 2 hours just to get round Milano, which was more than enough time for them to perform their dastardly deeds.

But, and more due to luck than my expert driving, I somehow managed to escape; which allowed me to ponder…

Does Italy hold Europe’s record for road deaths? Are they so used to see burning wrecks and dismembered bodies that they’ve become totally immune?

So I went looking.. And found these figures for 2005:

Road Fatalities per 1’000’000 Inhabitants

Netherlands: 46
Norway: 48

Sweden: 49

Great Britain: 53

Switzerland: 56

Denmark: 61

Germany: 65

France: 80

Austria: 94

Italy: 97

Ireland: 99

Luxembourg: 102

Slovakia: 104

Belgium: 106

Portugal: 119

Estonia: 125

Czech Republic: 126

Hungary: 128
Slovenia: 129

Cyprus: 140

Poland: 143

Greece: 146

Latvia: 191

And the winner is Lithuania with a whopping 221!!

So my conclusions can only be:

a) It is a personal grudge they have against me

b) I’ll add Lithuania to my TomTom’s list of “places to avoid”.

c) I might just revise my opinion about Slovenia!