Things To Be Wary of When Driving Around Europe.

[Renato1]

It seems like on every trip to Europe I learn of something else to be wary of when driving around there. Please post any of your experiences for me and others to be wary of, so that I don't have to learn them first-hand. Following are some things I've learned so far.

1. At uncontrolled intersections one has to give way to the right (just like over here, even though they're on the other side of the road). This wasn't much of an issue as most places had Stop signs at intersections like over here - except in Switzerland where I got tooted an awful lot for not having given way when I should have. This can obviously be the cause of an accident.

2. Again in Switzerland, when you go past an electric bus picking up passengers, plant your foot hard. It may be some kind of sport when they see someone with a foreign number plate, but on three occasions in two days, while going past parked buses, they indicated for half a second and then immediately pulled out nearly wiping me off.

3. In Italy, I waited patiently at a set of lights for the left turn arrow to go from red to green so that I could turn. The arrow went green and fortunately I didn't plant my foot to turn at the intersection, as all the oncoming cars still had a green light facing them and were tearing through. That's an easy way to get killed.

4. When one is travelling on a Motorway and overtaking long lines of trucks (be it in Italy, France, Belgium, Austria etc), and doing the speed limit of 130kph or exceeding it at say 140kph, do not get stressed and panicked when other drivers start tail-gating you two inches from your bumper, for holding them up. This can cause you to have an accident. Rather, remember that your money is just as good as theirs, and that you have paid to be on that road doing the maximum speed. Then just swear and abuse them, and keep doing your speed until you are safely past the trucks and can pull into their lane.

5. When driving around, unless you really want to drive within Switzerland, it's best to avoid it for drive throughs or day trips. They charge over 30 Euros for the sticker to use their freeways - it is good for a whole year - but pretty pointless for a quick drive to visit a town near the border (on the other hand, it's worth it for the experience of driving through a 17km long tunnel).

6. When driving from Italy to Croatia, you have to drive through Slovenia - who insist you pay 15 Euros for a 7 day sticker to use their freeway. The freeway trip to Croatia is only around 20 minutes, and the 15 Euros is a rip-off. So when you go past Trieste and stop where you buy the sticker for your window, look for a break in the barricades and drive through there to get off the freeway (it isn't marked as an exit). Set you navigator to "No Tolls" and have a pleasant trip through Slovenia which is about 15 minutes longer than having gone via the freeway. Stop somewhere and buy some Slovenian doughnuts with the money you have saved. Alternatively, before getting to Trieste, set your navigator to Muggia (in Italy) or Ankarran (in Slovenia) and have a pleasant drive along the coast to Croatia (the doughnuts are really good in the service station at Ankarran).

Cheers,
Renato

 

[Altair]

Remind you navigator, this time Mrs Altair, that we are driving on the other side of the road so when she says "take the first exit at the next roundabout." she really means keep going until the last exit of the roundabout.....It was an interesting but thoroughly enjoyable two weeks of driving around.
Another thing we noticed was generally lack of warning for turn off for places of interest, eg. small sign on the corner of the road, not a large sign 500 m further up stating to take the next turn off.

 

[Renato1]

Remind you navigator, this time Mrs Altair, that we are driving on the other side of the road so when she says "take the first exit at the next roundabout." she really means keep going until the last exit of the roundabout.....It was an interesting but thoroughly enjoyable two weeks of driving around.
Another thing we noticed was generally lack of warning for turn off for places of interest, eg. small sign on the corner of the road, not a large sign 500 m further up stating to take the next turn off.

Thanks, a good woman at your side makes life so much easier. Fortunately, my wife is now an expert at telling me where the navigator meant I should turn (looking at the arrow, rather than listening to what it said) - though sometimes she tells me when I've gone past the turn.

The lack of good signs in Italy made me extremely irate some times. For example, like the sign telling you to turn right only being see-able after you've passed the turning lane that you should have turned into. Or diligently following the walking signs to Galileo's house in Padova only to come to a T intersection with no further signs in sight.

The other thing which really threw me in Italy (pre navigator) was when I hit a roundabout where I thought I should go straight through to get to where I'm going. In Australia we'd have the name of the city and an upward arrow on the other side of the road telling you to keep going straight. And, indeed, sometimes they have the same type sign in Italy. But at other roundabouts where that sign should be, they instead have the name of the city and an arrow pointing right - which I thought meant turn right, but instead meant go straight through. It turned out that one would only turn right if that same sign was on the road on the right hand side of the roundabout.

When I explained this to people back home, half said they would have turned right like I had, and half said that it was bleeding obvious what the sign meant, and how could I have made such a dumb mistake?
Cheers,
Renato

 

[chelzmalee]

* In Czech Republic you also need a freeway sticker - these are available from service stations and are available for different lengths of time.

* In Poland toll roads often mean you stop at the first booth and get a ticket, then hand it over at the second booth where you pay.

 

[Cossie]

Watch out for speed cameras in Germany, some autobahns may be unlimited, but a lot have variable limits. Also the yellow rectangle sign with a towns name on it automatically means the speed limit is 50kph, on leaving an urban area the yellow sign will have a red slash through it.

Road signs in Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[medhead]

Given the way they ignore speed limits in Europe, I'd bet that sitting in the left lane at the speed limit is a fairly big no, no.

Another tip of autobahns is that your not allowed to stay in the left lane continuously. Have to change back into the right lane periodically.

 

[marki]

* In Czech Republic you also need a freeway sticker - these are available from service stations and are available for different lengths of time.

* In Poland toll roads often mean you stop at the first booth and get a ticket, then hand it over at the second booth where you pay.

Had no idea about thanks

 

[Renato1]

* In Czech Republic you also need a freeway sticker - these are available from service stations and are available for different lengths of time.

* In Poland toll roads often mean you stop at the first booth and get a ticket, then hand it over at the second booth where you pay.

Thanks for that - though I note that there is no way for me to use it as most car hire places in my town in Italy won't let me drive into the old eastern block countries, except for Croatia.

I had all these great plans for driving to various places (Budapest, Bratislava, Sarajevo and Belgrade) earlier this year, but I wasn't allowed.
Regards,
Renato

 

[Renato1]

Watch out for speed cameras in Germany, some autobahns may be unlimited, but a lot have variable limits. Also the yellow rectangle sign with a towns name on it automatically means the speed limit is 50kph, on leaving an urban area the yellow sign will have a red slash through it.

Road signs in Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks - you may well have saved me some money, as I'm driving to Munich and Salzberg later this year. And that Crossroads/Right of way to the Right sign was one I didn't know about.

Talking of 50k signs, I got very frustrated on my first trip to Italy - I would drive into a town and see the 50k sign. As I drove out of town I saw the 50K sign with a cross through it. So what the hell was the speed limit? Would it have hurt to put the limit on the road? And people seemed to be doing all sorts of speeds past the end 50k sign.

So I asked neighbours and cousins what the speed limit was at the end of the 50kph limit, and I got the following answers - 70kph, 80kph, 90kph, 100kph and even 110kph.

Finally, one guy said to me, "Do not listen to them, they do not know anything - the correct speed limit is 70kph on single lane, and 90kph on dual lanes". I confirmed this some years later in a publication. But it may explain why people drive so fast over in Italy.
Cheers,
Renato

 

[Renato1]

Given the way they ignore speed limits in Europe, I'd bet that sitting in the left lane at the speed limit is a fairly big no, no.

Another tip of autobahns is that your not allowed to stay in the left lane continuously. Have to change back into the right lane periodically.

It is a big no no, and other drivers will let you know. But you can't happily sit in the right lane either, as the trucks can only do 100kph. So that one is constantly overtaking convoys of them.

Regards,
Renato

 

[Happy Trails]

Things To Be Wary of When Driving Around Europe?

Europeans.

 

[Renato1]

Oh - I forgot something.
On my second last driving trip I had a dual SIM phone containing my international E-kit SIM card and an Italian TIM prepaid SIM card.

The TIM card was fabulous - for 8 Euros a month I never got charged for a call in Italy and had 2Gbytes of data, which I never got through (there is nothing that cheap in Australia).

Only problem was that as one went from one country to another, the TIM card got a Welcome to Our Country message. What I didn't realize was that each message seemed to cost me one Euro. So, after finishing the drive through 8 countries, the TIM Sim card had used up all its credit from receiving the Welcome messages.

I made sure that I disabled the card on my next multi-country drive.
Cheers,
Renato

 

[anat0l]

When driving in Switzerland, don't even think about speeding. The country is crawling with speed cameras everywhere. Fines are very high for speeding.

In Germany, where there are no set speed limits on parts of the Autobahnen, there is an advisory speed limit of 130 km/h. You can obviously exceed this limit without penalty per se, but if you are involved in an incident, going higher than the advisory speed limit may be used as evidence against you.