Iceland on an Italian Licence — No ZTL Here, But the F-Roads Bite

The instinct an Italian driver brings to a new country — watch for the ZTL, mind the camera over the historic centre — simply doesn’t apply in Iceland. There are no restricted-traffic zones, no urban tangle to decode. Your licence is accepted as-is, no permit needed, and you stay on the right. What replaces all that is a landscape that does the catching-out instead.

Iceland’s interior runs on F-roads, rough mountain tracks limited by law to 4WD vehicles. The part that surprises visitors is the insurance: take a standard hire car onto an F-road and your cover vanishes immediately, even for a stone chip. Many of these routes also ford rivers with no bridge, and misjudging the depth is the classic way a rental ends its life. Stay on the paved Ring Road and a normal car copes fine; want the highlands, you need a proper 4WD and a rental contract that allows it.

There are no motorways, which changes the rhythm of the whole trip. Sealed roads cap at 90 km/h, gravel at 80 — and gravel covers much of the network. The real skill isn’t speed but the transition: slow hard where tarmac becomes loose stone, both to hold grip and to spare the windscreen from flung gravel.

Weather is the wildcard. Wind, sleet and whiteouts close roads at short notice even in summer, so check road.is and the wind forecast before each leg. Going off-road or onto a closed track draws a fine from about ISK 10,000 (around EUR 65).

Alcohol is 0.05, the same as Italy, but with single-vehicle accidents common it’s wise to keep it to none. Fuel is steep at roughly $2.15/litre, the emergency line is 112, and offline maps are essential away from the coast. Read the full rules on our Iceland driving guide and confirm your documents with the driving permit checker before you set off.