Roman Roulette & Other Games

Over designated "black" danger spots on French highways, 13 helicopters hovered last weekend equipped with doctors and plasma and ready to stop the flow of blood as vacationers swarmed home. In Italy, reports of traffic accidents were filling up to five columns almost daily in Rome's II Messaggero, and madcap Italian drivers scored a record 184 deaths during the Aug. 12 to 24 holiday peak. In Germany, where the rate of traffic accidents per vehicle was already five times as great as in the U.S., road fatalities were running 30% higher than last year. And even in Britain, where drivers unnerve one another with elaborate courtesy and flapping arm signals that look like the wings of a panicked goose, 81 died in August bank-holiday traffic.

Theory over Practice. The August torrent of vacationers put Europe's motor maniacs on full display. The European driver may appear to be just an exasperated fellow stuck with his underpowered four-cylinder car on an overloaded two-lane highway, but deep down inside he is Ascari lapping the pack, Rommel leading the tanks, De Gaulle thumbing his nose at the world. Driving is a sport, an intoxication, a release. It is in the blood more than in the brain, and spirit means more than skill.

Since Europeans came to affluence later than Americans, most of them first got behind the wheel at a later age. In ten years, the number of autos in England has doubled, and in Germany the car census has grown from 500,000 in 1950 to more than 7,000,000 now. Driving schools are crowded with middle-aged learners. The tests are usually elaborate, but they tend to be more intellectual than practical. The standard French examination, for instance, does not necessarily ensure that a candidate knows how to make a turn from the proper lane, but it sternly requires theoretical answers to such questions as: "What actions does one take when approaching a funeral cortege or a column of soldiers?"-

The French driver is always learning. Once he thinks he has grasped the rudiments, his hands unfreeze from the wheel enough for him to gesticulate and shout freely. Then he learns how to wind up his little car to its top 60 or 70 m.p.h. and hold it there, come what may. He advances to understanding the subtleties of the basic traffic law of priorite `a droite, which means yielding to the car on the right only if there is no way of bluffing through. Then come more refined arts, such as passing on the crest of a hill.

Educational Honks. The Germans, having established a stable and working democracy, now take their death wish and other peculiar psychological needs out on the highway. Germany still being Germany, there is a hierarchy of cars, so that a Volkswagen has the right to pass a trifling Goggomobil but should never challenge a stately Mercedes. Furthermore, Germans like to play cop to their fellow drivers. Discipline can be instilled, for instance, by an "educational honk" of the horn, and if that is not enough, by a Deutscher Gruss, or German greeting, in which the forehead is tapped with the right index finger, suggesting mental derangement in the other fellow.

No one can cut such a bella figura or prove himself such a furbo (big shot) behind the wheel as the Italian. He passes on the right, double passes on the left, triple parks, turns left from the right-hand lane, lunges at pedestrians, ogles the girls, looks at his handsome self in the mirror, waves his arms wildly and shrieks "criminali" and "bastardi" at other drivers. He plays Roman roulette, which means hurtling into an intersection without looking to left or right. The one thing he likes better than passing a whole row of cars is passing the car that is passing them. No wonder that Americans arriving at the military base at Naples are prudently taught "defensive driving."

The only time a European driver behaves is when he visits a neighboring country. Then he is likely to be sane and slow. Naturally. He is scared of all those crazy foreign drivers.

* Right answer: "I must reduce my speed, overtake or pass, leaving a wide margin, and always carefully looking out for the movements of the elements of the column; I must never cut through a cortege."

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