Get around

By car

Italy has a well-developed system of highways in the northern side of the country while in the southern it's a bit worse for quality and extension. Every highway is identified by an A followed by a number. Most of the highways (autostrade) are toll roads. Some have toll station giving you access to a section, others have entrance and exit toll stations. Don't lose your entrance ticket or you will be charged for the longest distance (example: if you are on A1 Milano-Napoli at Milan toll station you'll be charged for the entire 700km distance). All the blue lanes (marked "Viacard") of toll stations, accept major credit cards as well as pre-paid card (Viacard) you can buy at tobacconist, Autogrill, gas stations.

Many italians uses an electronic pay-toll device, and there's reserved lanes marked in Yellow with the sign "Telepass" or a simply "T". Driving through those lanes (controlled by camera system) without the device will result in a fine of 50 euros and a payment of the toll from the longest distance. Due to agreement with other countries,if you're foreigner, you'll pay also extra cost for locating you in your country.

Policemen sometimes read your ticket at the toll station to see how long you took since joining the autoroute: they can use that info to give you a speeding ticket. Even if speeding is very common on Italian Highways, be aware that there are a number of automatic and almost invisible system to punish speeding and hazardous driving. If you don't know the road very well you should probably keep a reasonable speed.

Since 2006, some highways are checked by the "Tutor", an automatic system that checks your average speed on a long section (5-10 kms).
A good clue of a nearby check system is when cars around you suddenly reduce speed. If you see a lot of cars keeping themselves just under the limit and nobody overtaking, you'd better do the same.

Speed limits are:

• 130 km/h on highways (autostrade);
• 110 km/h on freeways (superstrade);
• 90 km/h on single-lane roads;
• 50 km/h inside cities.

Italian laws allow a 5% (minumum 5 km/h) tolerance on local speed limit. Fines are generally very expensive.

Motorbikes should drive always with the headlights on, for other vehicles that applies only outside cities.

Drink and driving is a controversial issue. The tolerated limit is 0.50g/L in blood, being above this limit is thus illegal and can entitle you an expensive fine and licence withdraw and maybe also a night in jail, but you'll find that people of every age are not significantly worried for that and there's nothing such designated driver or else. All passengers are required to wear their seat belt and children under 10 must use the back seat. Unless clearly posted on the road you are using, you are supposed to yield to any vehicle coming from your right from another public thoroughfare. Signposts used in Italy are patterned according to EU recommendations and use mostly pictograms (not text) but there are minor differences (example: highways directions are written on green background while the white stands for local roads and blue for the remaining).