Autumn in Italy: fog in the Po valley and the first storms

From October the Po valley produces the densest fog in Europe, and with it the accident type that fills Italian motorway files every autumn: the pile-up at the end of a queue that appeared out of nothing.

Fog and chain collisions

The A1 around Bologna, the A4 across Lombardy and Veneto and the A13 towards Padua are the classic stretches. Visibility can drop below fifty metres within a kilometre of clear road.

A chain collision changes how a claim works: with five or ten vehicles involved, liability is untangled from the damage patterns rather than the drivers' accounts. If it happens to you, photograph every contact point on your own vehicle — being struck once and being struck twice look similar in the moment and settle very differently.

Photograph the conditions too. A picture that shows the fog is evidence; by the time anyone assesses the vehicle, the weather is a memory.

Rain, standing water and what it hides

Autumn storms produce standing water on motorways and flash flooding in underpasses. Driving into water deep enough to reach the intake is an expensive mistake, and one that comprehensive policies treat carefully — engine damage from water ingestion is assessed on what the driver could see.

Where a vehicle has stood in water, document the water line before anything is cleaned or dried. The height it reached decides which components are affected, and it is invisible a day later.

Wildlife and shorter days

Autumn is also the season when deer and boar move most, and when the commute happens in the dark at both ends. Animal collisions concentrate in the Apennines and the northern foothills, and the damage is usually low and central — radiator, condenser, front structure.

Frequently asked questions

I was hit from behind in fog. Is my claim affected by the visibility?

Liability depends on the facts, including speed and distance, and it is a legal question. What we can do is document the impacts on your vehicle — in a chain collision that record is what separates one impact from another.

I drove through a flooded underpass and the engine stopped.

Do not restart it. Have it recovered and assessed before anything else — a restart after water ingestion is what turns a repairable engine into a replacement one.

The damage is minor but there were five cars involved.

Document it anyway and thoroughly. In multi-vehicle cases the sequence matters more than the size of any single damage, and it can only be reconstructed from what was recorded at the time.