In Rome Now: Crossing the Street

[A new link has been added: In Rome Now, with lots of information about galleries, events, shopping - and SURVIVAL. The following somewhat daunting post comes from the Survival Guide.

We're sure that your mother taught you how to cross the street: wait for the green light, look both ways, that sort of thing. This course of instruction will prove perilously inadequate in the center of Rome.

Let’s say you are standing at the crosswalk on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, You look both ways. At eleven o’clock on a weekday morning, the traffic flows heavily on the Corso from both directions. So you wait for a break in the traffic. At eleven o’clock on that same weekday evening, you may find yourself still standing at the same crosswalk, hoping that the traffic will eventually break.

For the novice Rome pedestrian, a better course of action is to wait for a native. Natives cross the street without waiting, and often without looking right-left-right to see what’s about to smash them. They enter the crosswalk in the firm belief that the drivers of the approaching vehicles are in no mood to commit manslaughter. Miraculously, the Red Sea of traffic parts and the native pedestrian almost always makes it safely to the opposite curb.

Protect yourself with such a pedestrian. Cross right along with him or her, preferably to his or her right so that the odd murderous driver will hit him or her first, thus buffering the impact on your own body. Should you be fortunate enough to come across a traffic light, do not rely on the green walk signal. This generally is timed to last two seconds or less, followed by a longer amber warning signal. Cross on amber or you may never cross at all.