III. La cintura...

I’d like to use again my recent experience in Sweden, to talk about the Italian behavior towards seatbelt.

When I arrived in Stockholm, the bus was full of Italians, the driver took the micro and said with irony: “Good morning, since we’re in Sweden… please fasten your seatbelt”.

Only 10% of the bus executed it. I can understand that maybe not every Italian is fluent in English to understand what the driver said, but in that case, you just look around you to check what others do, and you see people putting their seat belt on.

If you go in a car with an Italian, don’t count on him to put his seat belt. He will even laugh at you when you’ll start looking for it. He can be driving downtown or at 130Km per hour on the highway, they simply don’t need it. The only time they put it, is, when suddenly they see a police car, in that case you can expect them to put it for around 2 min. It’s a bit like a kid that wants to feel free and provoke but that starts behaving, when see his parents close to punish him.

I asked them why they were not putting it, I have to admit I never had a clear answer.

Honestly, I wonder why the government does not try to change the mentalities. In France, between repression and the gory details ads campaigns (trashed car, dead/handicapped people, blood…), people finally changed their habits. In Italy, people have visibly no awareness about the danger driving represents. They ‘re not scared enough otherwise they will take the risk of having their friends laughing at them and start putting their seatbelt…

I have a few friends from Napoli area, they told me that if you go there, nobody wears an helmet.  Apparently it has been established that only mafia people wear helmet to hide their faces while driving their moto or vespa…  Well that’s good to know, lol.

Anyway, I still can’t figure out why from one side of the border to the other, the mentality can be so different: there is only 400km between Milan and Grenoble, and in France, people on their vespa wear their helmet, this is even more incredible that our helmets are not as cool as the Italians ones. I love so much their vespa helmet that  several times, I was ready to buy one even if I don’t have a vespa…