Out of Italy: Danger: cars stoned on autostrada

ROME - These are days of high tension in the cities and beach resorts of Italy. The spiralling corruption scandals and worsening government crisis have little to do with it. No, the cause of the anguish is far more fundamental to the lives of most Italians; a rash of stoning attacks on cars on motorways.

So far 15 people have been hurt, one seriously, and more than 20 vehicles damaged. Terrifying though this is for the victims, it may not sound like a cause for national alarm and despondency. But Italians have double cause to worry. For the typical family, summer holidays mean loading up the car and bombing down to the coast or to the house in the country.

Already the traditional exodus of the end of July is lemming-like. As in France, the death toll of each weekend in this period is anxiously charted. The sassi killer (killer stones) as they have been dubbed, are one more hazard to be overcome in the rush to nirvana. Police believe it is only luck that there have been no fatalities so far this year. Last December a young woman was killed by a rock thrown through the roof of her boyfriend's car from a motorway bridge near Verona.

The latest attacks have refocused attention on the ugly light that crime sheds on a whole section of Italian youth. When two of the woman's killers, both aged 19, were caught, they showed no remorse. Both from well- off families in Verona, they told police they regularly threw rocks at passing cars 'for a laugh, to enjoy ourselves'. A chilling picture emerged of spoilt but disaffected teenagers. Lacking nothing materially, they felt the only way to enhance their spiritually and culturally empty lives was violence. More worrying still, the crime inspired a rash of copy-cat attacks in the Verona area, in many cases by younger boys.

Parallels have since been suggested with the killers of the Liverpool toddler, James Bulger. The difference is that the existential malaise behind the motorway attacks was the result not of deprivation but of too much wealth. So when the first stoning cases this summer were reported in the same gilded heartland of northern Italy, few were surprised.

Experts once again appeared on television and in newspapers to tell the public that the phenomenon was a cry for help from youngsters who had everything they could want - except excitement. 'They are in search of the sort of buzz that wielding the power of life and death can give,' said one psychologist.

Complicating the debate is the sort of controversy familiar to whoever has followed the arguments over sex education or the fight against drug abuse in Britain. Should experts be telling the public about the sort of thrill these activities can produce? Wasn't this just encouraging other kids to try it for themselves? Fuel was thrown on the fire as the stonings spread, this time into Tuscany and south to Rome. Variations have appeared. Older thugs have taken to hurling stones from speeding cars at vehicles travelling in the opposite direction. The government has announced that 100m lire ( pounds 40,000) will be paid in rewards for information leading to arrests. For good measure, the traffic police in central Emilia Romagna are adding a week's free holiday at a local seaside resort.

This week the police announced modest successes. Eight youngsters, aged from 5 to 17, have been caught. In one case, officers in Frosinone, 35 miles south of Rome, caught two boys hurling rocks from a motorway bridge. The pair, 12 and 14 years old, apparently come from respectable, middle- class families. Their tearful confessions bear out the experts' worst fears. They were bored and just wanted to have fun. Then they really set the cat among the pastrami: 'We wanted to get that buzz we heard so much about on the television.'

Now the row over the responsibilities of the media has overshadowed the original hand-wringing. Since Italy's disaffected youth clearly takes its cues from television, the coverage of the stonings has turned petty thugs into daring heroes, argue the police. Nonsense, retort journalists and experts; the public had to be warned and an alarming social phenomenon examined.

Meanwhile, Italians are spending their holidays fretting over whether their offspring are potential murderers - and then it will be time to face the sassi killer on the way home again.