Scooting through Rome used to be fun
Now, it’s safe
Thirty years ago, when I was visiting Santorini, we hired quads. Dressed in summer shorts, tee shirts, sneakers and sunglasses, we pitched up to the rental shop at 9 am and handed the things back at 7 pm. We explored a lot of dust trails, winding roads and magnificent outlooks from Akrotiri to Oia. Boy, did we have fun!
We didn’t have biking gear, we didn’t wear helmets (even though the law required them) and we didn’t have an accident. We didn’t injure ourselves and we didn’t injure anyone else. Yes, we were irresponsible but, cognisant of the risks, we drove safely. Is that a valid excuse? Ναι, provided everyone who hires a quad on Santorini drives safely. Όχι, if some numbskull injures themselves.
This is not a plea in favour of foolhardy risk-taking, far from it. When a British woman was killed in a motor accident soon after the introduction of airbags, it was determined that, in the freak incident that she’d been involved in, it was in fact the airbag that had killed her. A road safety expert interviewed by the press said sobering words to the effect that, if we want to ensure anything like total safety in cars, they should each be equipped with a metal spike on the steering wheel: that way, nobody would be taking any unnecessary risks, and we wouldn’t need airbags.
If you’ve seen the 1953 Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck classic Roman Holiday, you’ll know that Joe, an American news reporter (played by Peck) has been posted to a news agency’s Rome office and is told by his editor he needs to come up with a scoop, or else he’s outtathere. He comes by chance into contact with a European princess (Hepburn), who has absconded from her country’s embassy (and her official duties) and is lying drunk on a park bench, maintaining that she lives in the Coliseum. Peck takes her to his flat and, upon recognising her lying in bed the next morning, connives with a photographer (Eddie Albert) to conduct an off the record interview with the princess while showing her the highlights of the town. These include:
Joe and Ann careening through Rome on a Vespa scooter.1
Vespas still careen through Rome, and indeed the rest of Italy, with seeming impunity. But e-scooters now don’t, thanks to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s recent change to the Highway Code. The e-scooters are to need number plates and turn indicators, must not carry any passengers, the rider must be insured and wear a helmet. And Italian scooter rental firms are up in arms, on the basis that tourists who, in just a few days, want to see all of Rome (for which a lifetime is not enough)2 are hardly likely to have packed a motorcycle helmet in order to hire their e-scooters (in the picture above, you can see that neither did Roman Holiday-makers in 1953).
With an e-scooter, you can whip down an alleyway, ride the wrong way up a one-way street, cross a pigeon-infested square and rattle through the Forum. All of which could cause you to fall and injure yourself, or injure someone else. And you shouldn’t be riding at 20 km/h through pedestrian areas.
Mrs Meloni (she eschews the appellation Ms) is a controversial leader of a very lovable country, some of whose residents would welcome a return to the strictures of Signor Mussolini’s times. Progressives will rail at just about anything that the current conservative leadership does in Italy, but: should we rail at sensible road safety legislation, intended for the protection of riders and other road users alike? Or should we suspect that highway legislation is simply a pretext for raising funds through penalty notices and for squashing the general public, so they know who’s boss? Or should we assume that the e-scooter rental sector needs to up its lobbying effort (whatever that implies)? Sta a lei decidere.
Scooting through the Eternal City just got a little safer, and perhaps a little more fun.
By Trailer screenshotLicencing information :https://web.archive.org/web/20080321033709/http://www.sabucat.com/?pg=copyright and http://www.creativeclearance.com/guidelines.html#D2 - Roman Holiday trailer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2470307.
To the right in this scene, taken in the Via del Corso, with the Victor Emmanuel II Monument (known colloqially as the Wedding Cake or Typewriter) in the background, is the Palazzo Venezia, from which Benito Mussolini used to address crowds of people, retreating into the room behind the balcony from which he spoke whilst the crowd roared their approval, in order to make love to his mistress before re-emerging to continue his speech. In some people, the heart is not the only organ that is inspired by the power of fascism.
In Italian: Roma: non basta una vita.
Charming. I love that movie, and I think I still have the DVD (unless it's one of the many I gave to these seniors) I've never ridden a scooter, but they look like fun.