How do you anticipate being rammed from behind when you are stopped at roadworks? How do you anticipate that when you are in a hotel car park, little more than a car's width from a wall, about to open the door, some cretin will drive between you and the wall at 50 km/h? Three seconds later, and he'd have taken my wife's leg off, along with the Land Rover door. Above all, why should you have to anticipate that very few drivers are ever going to slow down for roundabouts? I wouldn't even take the Series III Land Rover to Italy any more, and I'd not begin to consider the motorcycle.
Yep. No problems in Malta and Greece. And I've ridden motorcycles since 1966, on three continents. But Italians are an (often literally fatal) combination of machismo aggression, incompetence and underpowered vehicles. The guy with the Fiat 500 wants to show he can keep up with a Ferrari or indeed with my BMW R100RS (which can give many Ferraris a run for their money). He can't. He couldn't even keep up with a competently driven moped.
