Italian bus driver goes completely hands-free A Roman bus driver has demonstrated just why Italians are globally celebrated for their automotive skills by steering his vehicle with his elbows while manipulating a brace of mobile phones. Footage of Roberto Noto's "acrobatic" skills was captured by a passenger en route to Rome's Ciampino airport on Wednesday. The concerned …
In Brussels, I took a tram and the driver appeared to have a small child sat on his knees, "driving". I think a phone may have been involved too, but perhaps I'm conflating two incidents there.
And in Iceland, I took a coach and the driver answered his phone while going up a steep hill and was unable to change gear as a result, which made the drive rather erratic; the call was actually from the bus company and there was even a "conductor" on board who could have answered it.
Sadly Iceland's not in this list, but it does have Italy and Belgium:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=5180&More=Y
Road death rate per 100,000 population (per annum presumably), 1999
Portugal 21.0
Greece 20.2
Spain 14.6
France 14.4
Belgium 13.7
Lux. 13.5
Austria 13.4
Italy 11.0 (1998)
Ireland 11.0
Denmark 9.7
Germany 9.5
Finland 8.4
Netherl. 6.9
Sweden 6.6
UK 6.0
I've been in (Southern) Spain regularly over the last 25 years. The standard of driving was incredibly bad then; the roads were full of morons, not to mention the fact that the roads themselves were generally badly built and unsafe. Things have got better, but it's still nothing like driving in the UK.
Anyone else notice the inverse correlation between countries with high road death rates, and countries with good F1 drivers, in the list above?
The original post suggested Spains roads were full of morons... I think the correlation with the UK is pretty exact. The number of ignorant and obnoxious morons that seem to have driving licences - or at least cars - in the UK is impossible to believe.
Many times now I've been overtaken when doing 30mph in a 30mph limit - quite often in town centres, next to play areas or outside school gates - and almost always in the morning rush
I've also found myself being tailgated on dual carriageways when the outside lane is empty (my lane discipline is good having driven in Germany for a few years).
Was carved up the other day because the guy decided I wasn't going fast enough in the inside lane - despite there being no other traffic in view on either carriageway (was early in the morning) - I guess I had disturbed his karma by making him change lane
Very often I potter along to later overtake the rude **** who stuck fingers up at me when they are sat in the same traffic jam I know is always further along the road
Then of course there is the 'I am happy in the middle / outside lane and see no reason to move back to the empty inside lane to let people pass me' brigade - and most people on here would probably agree about what they are (contrary to the evidence above I sometimes do hurry and frequently find myself stuck behind these idiots, at that point I really do wish for a much larger car to allow me to run them into the nearest ditch).
Given that on the Greek motorways, truck drivers regulalrly use the hard shoulder to allow other drivers to pass, by pulling in and out (oo-er) of it. Also, a large proportion of the Greek roads are narrow windy mountain roads, which naturally tend to have a higher fatality rate when driven off of.
Death rates from 1999 haven't quite caught up on widespread uptake of mobile phones; back then most people had none, nevermind two.
And a tram? Doesn't need steering and gear changing quite as much as does a bus.
I'd also add that while small children aren't something to take with you to work casually (unless you work in childcare), the presumptions behind showing a toddler the ropes of "steering" a tram is much more focused on the here and now and continued existence than fooling around with a smartphone toy while on a second phone. It still isn't the wisest thing to do, mind, but your attention is focused very differently.
Wouldn't surprise if the tram barely needed driving at all. It's been perfectly feasible to run rail transit with no driver for decades; newly built systems mostly still have drivers because of a) passenger fears and b) unions. Where I live (Vancouver) the entire light rail system is fully automated, there's no driver or even cab in any of the trains, and it's been that way since the system was built in the mid-80s. Admittedly it's a bit more complex where it's not a closed system - if there are multiple independent lines, or level crossings, or especially a tram system running on streets with cars driven by unpredictable humans with buggy wetware - but I think the automated systems are pretty damn good even at those situations now.
My abiding memory of using buses in Verona was that the drivers never actually stopped, they'd just slow down to slightly less than walking pace while everybody jumped on and off. This was mostly because of the Italian habit of double parking in every bus stop thereby ensuring that the bus couldn't stop without blocking the traffic. Strangely enough this turned out to be a very efficient way of running urban buses in traffic.
Once they got going though drivers tended to drive the bus, like every vehicle in Italy, like it was a Ferrari, meaning that if you weren't holding on with a very good grip you stood a good chance of ending up flat on the floor. It got worse when they got buses with energy storing inertial brakes: that just meant that the harder they stood on the brakes on the faster they could pull away afterwards.
I see bus drivers talking on their phones all the time, as I do people driving cars.
You can always tell because they go slower, or should I say, stop breaking the speed limit. Everyone behind them, me included (7 years have taken their toll) thinks its an old person until they pull alongside and see the phone attached to their ear. They will also drive without hands as Italians are unable to talk without gesticulating.
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