Why do most Italians ride scooters?

Italian fact of the day:

Why do most Italians ride scooters?

1. Their cities and the country in general are more crowded–parking is always a hassle and traffic is a complete mess, especially in big cities like Milan. It is more convenient to have a small motor-bike that can weave in and out of the cars and find parking in small spaces. Besides traffic conditions, cities like Milan require a hefty price for using your car in the city center due to the high congestion and air quality problems.

2. Considering the fact that many roads in Italian cities, especially those in smaller towns, can be very small, narrow, and/or steep depending on the terrain. These areas have amassed their topography over uncountable centuries, and their roads tend to be more convoluted and tangled, intersecting, weaving, and bumped into piazzas. Of course I am not discounting city-planning in the least, but these urban schemes tend to chart the path of human activity and community interaction. Have you ever seen a map of Milan? It looks like a spider web in that there are larger circles, called le circonvallazioni, that ring the traffic in, out and around the city. Scooters are conducive for any road type or route.

3. They are not allowed to get their drivers license until they are 18 years old. However, they are permitted to drive motor-scooters at the age of 14. Therefore, teenagers are raised on two wheels before they earn their right of passage.

4. It is simply soooo much fun to ride a scooter around the city, zipping by monuments and feeling the air rush against you! I love watching people of ever age hop onto their motorini! From teenagers: dressed in the latest fashion, with their high top shoes and conformist brands, styled hair-dos under helmets, flying to their next encounter—to the working class: women flipping their hair and pressing the gas with high heels, men with flying suit tails flapping in the breeze weaving through morning traffic, picking up their children after school and securing them in the bike—to the older people: still hanging in with the high blood-pressure traffic maneuvers and ready as every to make absurd high-flying gestures at the crazy driving comportment of the fellow motorists–that absurd driving etiquette which is innately Italian.

5. They are just Italian!


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