We drove north, stopping overnight at Salerno on the west coast. We had previously seen huge piles of rubbish on the roadside in southern Italy but we had assumed it was a temporary problem due to some industrial action by the refuse collectors; so we were shocked to see piles of uncollected rubbish in the touristy area along the seafront in Salerno. No-one seemed bothered and it looked as if the piles had been there for weeks.
Whilst having a rant, I have to mention Italian roads where some drivers behaved as if they were competing in a road race. Admittedly, some of the road junctions were so complicated and not at all conducive to the orderly flow of traffic, so it had to be every man for himself.
We regularly spotted cars undertaking or driving right on the tail of the car in front, forcing them to move over to the slower lane; and when a carriageway narrowed, maybe due to roadworks, cars would accelerate past the slowing traffic in order to get to the front of the queue. It wasn’t the Italian style to give way to other drivers allowing them to cut in, so everything regularly came to a snarling halt.
On one occasion we were held up for over an hour by a bad accident just a few minutes ahead of us on the motorway. All the cars had come to a halt and folk were getting out of their vehicles to see what was going on. One driver decided to try and avoid the hold up by reversing back up the motorway along the hard shoulder – only to be met by the blue lights and sirens of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars all travelling at speed on the hard shoulder to attend the accident – the reversing driver was lucky not to have been mown down!
