The other day my wife travelled with Lino, our mechanic, to go and look at a prospective car purchase. The journey in question was not long, but part of the route did involve a gallop down the Roma-L'Aquila autostrada.
As is her wont, the wife pulled on her seat-belt as the car moved off, prompting Lino to plead: "Don't do that, it brings bad luck."
Lino is not alone. Thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of Italians share his belief. If you start thinking about trouble, then you will attract it, or so the reasoning goes.
When compulsory seat-belt-wearing was first introduced in Italy in 1989, an enterprising firm in Naples immediately produced a range of T-shirts with a fake seatbelt carefully drawn across the wearer's chest. That was one way to avoid being fined and yet not risk bringing iella (bad luck) on yourself.
The seat-belt issue was highlighted in a report issued last week by the Italian Automobile Club (ACI) in conjunction with the research institute Censis. The report claims that only 10 per cent of Italians use seat-belts, making Italians among the least assiduous seat-belt-users in Europe (Greece has 20 per cent use, Portugal 30 per cent, Belgium and Ireland 50 per cent, Germany and England 90 per cent).
The low seat-belt use is all the more strange when you consider the report's other findings, which confirm something that has long been obvious to anyone who drives regularly in Italy; namely that Italy's roads are among the most congested and accident-prone in the world. No fewer than 97,000 people have been killed on them in the last decade and 2.5 million people have been injured. Put another way, an average of 20 people per day were killed in car accidents on Italian roads in the last 10 years.
Such carnage is hardly surprising in a country which now has more cars per head than anywhere in Europe (30 million or 1.8 per capita). The death toll, too, is hardly surprising in a country where certain national traits (impatience, childishness and a certain disrespect for rules and regulations) are hardly ideally suited to driving.
To drive along the average Italian highway is to be subjected to a variety of manoeuvres by fellow road-users which at first seem positively dangerous but soon seem par for the course.
A few examples? If an Italian has missed his turn-off, there can be no question of going on down the road to a find a suitable place to turn.
No, he just reverses down the road into the oncoming traffic and back to where he should have turned. This is an especially common practice on autostrade and big-city ring-roads during rush-hour.
Being overtaken on the right (wrong) side of a dual carriageway; being overtaken just as you come into a bend on a country road; seeing mothers sitting in the front passenger seat with a baby or small child in their lap, without a seat-belt; meeting an oncoming car on your side of the road as you come out of a bend; all of these and much else besides are simply routine for Italian driving.
Even state authorities tacitly admit defeat on the difficult business of disciplining the traffic-jammed Italian city driver whose frustration regularly sees him jump the red lights.
Come midnight, most traffic lights in Italian cities go on a permanent amber blink since authorities know no one will stop for them. And as for breathalysers, well, they are few and far between. . .
All is not lost, however. Last week's report showed 54 per cent of Italians now accept that the number of cars on the road should be reduced, if necessary by limiting each household to a maximum of two cars.
The report also indicated an interesting trend with city drivers (40 per cent in Rome, for example) reducing their use of the car because of the twin frustrations of traffic jams and no parking space.
From Alfa Romeo to Fiat, from Lancia to Ferrari and from Maserati to Lamborghini, the motor car has a special place in the fabric of Italian society, with the car industry representing an understandable source of national pride and sense of achievement for post-war generations.
In such a context, the first tentative signs of a reduction of car use are intriguing, a point underlined by Censis director, Mr Giuseppe de Rita: "The car is no longer anything new, no longer a dream. For a generation the car meant freedom, fun and emancipation. Now it means being trapped in a situation [that gives rise to] smart-ass, bad-mannered, rule-breaking behaviour." Sound familiar?