I love visiting Italy, and it's great to visit a country where the drivers—and everyone—have attitude.
However, when you come from a nanny state with Namby-pamby road rules like I do, it takes a bit of getting used to driving in Italy. The last time I had to drive from Genoa to Rome I was overtaken so often I thought I'd be better off with a low-flying jet despite driving at about as fast as my cheap rental car would go!
Mind you, that spirit it doesn't always bode well for the locals. Once in Firenze at a 90° T intersection with the road that follows the bank of the Arno, I saw that the traffic lights were out and stuck on red, so traffic couldn't veer off down the intersecting road.
Not to be outdone, mopeds and small cars just mounted the sidewalk and bypassed the red lights altogether (by going down the sidewalk they technically weren't going though the red lights (now where they?). Now, that's good lateral thinking but it would never happen where I come from.
Unfortunately, there was a huge ditch in the sidewalk some 10/15 metres down from the intersection that wasn't easily seen when one turned the corner. The result was that this enormous hole (almost a sinkhole in size) was full of busted mopeds and small cars!
Nevertheless, I give them 10/10 for ingenuity. ;-)
BTW, I saw this news report about the police using a Lamborghini to transport a donor organ on TV last night. There didn't seem anything unusual about the story (for Italy anyway) and Lamborghini had donated the car to police some time back specifically for purposes like that. Seems they did AOK and I hope the patient is doing well.