Cars: Traffic Patterns

Over the days that we have been here I have slowly adapted to the fiasco which is called traffic in Rome. I have noticed that one tell tale sign that someone is a tourist is how they act when trying to cross a street. The looking into the drivers eye approach has worked for me very well, and I encourage anyone that is not doing that yet to get on it. I want to try and soak in as much of the culture here as possible, so if it means stepping out into oncoming traffic, then so be it. Someone also informed me of one interesting tid-bit of information regarding pedestrian and automobile relations. If you get hit by someone when you are on foot, on top of having to pay for your medical expenses, they also have to pay you 45,000 euro. Once I found this out I have been taking crossing the street much less seriously as I had previously. Now I am not jumping out in front of moving cars trying to get hit, but I just make sure that if I do cross a little more recklessly than usual that the vehicle is not moving fast enough to kill me if they were not to break. I figured that all of the natives cross quite sporadically, so I might as well join in with the culture and at the same time take a gamble at making 45 grand (by the way that comes out to $70,650) with an estimated exchange rate of 1.57. So get out there and jump in to some money, by jumping into traffic!