Traffic, the counter-exodus paralyzes Italy. Red dot between queues and accidents –

Last weekend of August marked by the late summer counter-exodus and the heat. Traffic has been on the red dot since Friday evening and will remain so throughout the day on Sunday. Already today Viabilità Italia has reported heavy flows with slowdowns and queues on the main routes near holiday resorts, in the direction of urban centres, and at the barriers of the state borders, such as Ventimiglia, the Mont Blanc tunnel, Como and Ugovizza, both exiting and entering the country. Tomorrow from 7 am to 10 pm the ban on transit of heavy vehicles on the motorway will come into force again.

Two critical situations related to accidents, one on the A1 in Lazio and one on the A23 in Friuli. This morning, four vehicles collided on the Autostrada del Sole heading north, between the Valmontone junction and the Roma Sud branch: the toll is one dead and three injured. The highway was reopened only at 1:30 pm and queues of up to 9 kilometers formed. A massive pile-up on the A23, between Gemona and Carnia, in Friuli, involved seven vehicles and blocked the highway heading towards Austria for hours, with a queue of almost 10 km. The toll is 26 injured, three of them seriously. A 24-year-old mother died when her Golf rolled over in Fondi, in the province of Latina. The driver was her 22-year-old partner, who tested positive for alcohol and drugs. The young woman’s baby, a few months old, was taken by helicopter to Rome, and the driver’s sister were also seriously injured. The 22-year-old, discharged from the hospital, was transferred to house arrest by the Formia traffic police, on the orders of the deputy prosecutor on duty at the Latina public prosecutor’s office. In the province of Taranto, along state road 106, a 68-year-old died in a collision between two cars, one of which was going the wrong way. The other driver was injured and taken to the hospital with a red code.

The counter-exodus is still taking place in the heat: for Saturday, nine cities are marked with a red dot (Bari, Bologna, Brescia, Florence, Latina, Perugia, Rome and Trieste) and two with an orange dot (Bolzano and Verona). Sunday is better: only two red dot, Bari and Perugia, and one orange dot for Campobasso. In total, 38 million Italians have spent at least one day of vacation in Italy or abroad this summer, 500,000 more than in 2023.