Every Italian will come to celebrate the end of 2011 in a different way: with dinner or without; in groups or in close company or alone; not indulging too much - we hope - in alcohol and exaggerated firecrackers. But with one certainty: in the year that has just ended, he will have spent something like 3.280 euros on driving. It doesn't matter if he will be a man or a woman, young or newborn or octogenarian. And not even if a car owns it or not. The same applies if he has driven at least one minute or all 12 months with daily averages as a taxi driver. In short, it is the average chicken. The result of a study carried out, as has become tradition, by the Automobile Club of Italy and Censis, which gave birth to the 19th edition of this report on the transport sector in general.
A worrying study, and on which the sector itself - but also the Government - would do well to meditate a bit. Why the above mentioned 3.200 euro mark an increase of around 2,7% in the expenditure recorded (again per person) in 2010. Which in itself would be an encouraging fact: real life, in fact, is much more expensive. But the concern derives from the fact that, again according to the study, the car continues undaunted to be considered the most valid means, the preferred one for getting around, by 83,8% of Italians; but despite this Bulgarian percentage, almost one of our compatriots out of 5 candidly admits to having used the car less than the previous year.
To be amazed, frankly, is difficult. The social difficulties, the growing prohibitions in city centers and the hammering of electronic fines (Tutors, radars and various detectors) evidently designed not to educate but to make easy cash, on urban avenues as on the provincial roads, by themselves they would be an excellent deterrent to get behind the wheel as often as in the good old days. If we add the perpetually increasing motor liability insurance and the continuous increases in fuel prices, which have just recently gone mad thanks to the umpteenth surge in excise taxes, the result becomes more than obvious.
Comment of outgoing president of ACI, Enrico Gelpi, laconic and perfectly repetitive compared to many of its predecessors: "The costs borne by motorists are at the limit of sustainability". One might ask him what the Automobile Club has done to push the bar in another direction. But it is a difficult question, which would open up an endless sea of verbs in the past and above all in the conditional. And then this is not the right context. Better then go into a little more detail of these counts to find that: fuel costs (+2,3%), insurance (+2,9%), parking (+5,3%), but above all fines (+18%) increased the most. The latter are the result of a greater number of checks, but almost all telematics, because efficient agents and patrols around are seen less and more lazy, or perhaps discouraged, than before. And let's spread a pitiful veil over taxes, which today cover more than 31% (58 billion euros out of 165) of the total country/year of car spending.
Moral of the story: the trajectory of the Italian and that of the car, historically parallel, close to almost touching, are moving away. This is especially true for young people, who still a few years ago experienced the car as a long parable that went from the dream stage to the embodiment of the status achieved. And that today, however, make more and more use of two wheels and public transport, even if their standard of service is well below the typical average of many European countries. The over 45s are no less, prey for some years to a growing love for bicycles and longer walks than in the past.
In the light of these data, is it still right to be surprised by the car crisis in Italy? It makes sense to be amazed at a 2011 that will close with a number of cars sold almost 30% lower than the 2 of four or five years ago, when the market was doped up with state aid for scrapping and various clean technologies, the effectiveness of which lasted the space of a sigh that was only good for registering, and then who can see? And even the car manufacturers have not had a substantial weight in this growing departure from the car, snubbed by them for many years of ever more expensive cars because they are 'inflated' with more centimetres, more kilograms, more options increasingly in the wake of the gadget than of the aid to a real easier, or safer, or in any case better driving?…
