In Praise of California Traffic? : Italian newspaper finds something to love about driving here

Can California do anything right these days? Yes indeed, says La Stampa, a Turinese daily that ranks among the best of Italy’s newspapers. In a recent account of, believe it or not, California traffic regulations, correspondent Michele Fenu speaks--in the wondering tone ordinarily reserved for Swedish maternity leave--of such ingenious California practices as the annually renewable automobile license, the double driving license test (knowledge of the law and skill with the vehicle) and the revocable driver’s license itself.

Californians take for granted that parking violations and moving violations belong in clearly different categories. Italians, Fenu implies, do not, and he lauds California for making so much of the distinction. He holds in similarly high regard our severe treatment of drunk drivers and our lenient treatment (the traffic school alternative) of infrequent offenders on lesser counts. Ditto our obligatory liability insurance and penalties for poor drivers. Ditto the radar in our police patrol cars and the fact that a California driver sees a police car, on the average, every 16 kilometers. But the greatest wonder of all, he says, is the underlying California consensus in favor of the close regulation of traffic. Because of this, above all, our roads carry in safety and at some speed a number of vehicles that, Fenu implies, would reduce the roads of his homeland to howling gridlock and bloody murder.

So, take a bow, California; but as the applause subsides, consider the following: California controls cars the way Italy controls guns, and vice versa. The Italian attitude toward traffic regulation matches the Californian attitude toward gun control. You know: Cars don’t kill people, people kill people. The result? You take your life in your hands on their highways--and on our streets.

Fenu is right: Italy could have safer highways if it had a different public consensus about traffic regulation. But California could have safer streets if we had a different public consensus about gun control.