We long ago learned, if we ever needed to be told, that a vehicle was more than a machine for getting from A to B. Whether it's James Bond's Aston Martin, Boris Johnson's push bike or the Batmobile, there's a message to be had from the means of motion.

So what do scooters say? The last 24 hours have brought two very different possible answers: parsimony and panache. In recession-hit Britain, sales are soaring, while in India, the Italian firm Piaggio is preparing to relaunch its Vespa brand in the belief it will appeal to "fashion-conscious consumers … looking for a premium, exclusive lifestyle".

The scooter is – or rather, has become – a symbol of Italy. And that makes it unique. Neither cars nor lorries are associated with any one country, nor are motorbikes or bicycles. But as soon as you think "scooter", you instinctively think of Vespas lined up beside the Colosseum; of evenly tanned young women riding on them in improbably high heels, and of dark-haired young men lounging on them in the shade of a medieval duomo. If indeed scooters convey parsimony and panache then that is entirely appropriate, for they are quintessentially Italian qualities.

Here in Italy, though, the answer is unequivocal, and different again. Scooters mean freedom. They stand for the freedom to go wherever you want from the age of 14, often at frighteningly high speed. For me, at 18, the scooter unwisely lent to me by my employer offered the freedom to nip into the nearest town down a winding road though the Mediterranean scrub with the wind in my air and the sun on my face.

Scooters give you the freedom to lace your way through the gridlocked traffic of Naples, or shoot from one side to the other of a city like Rome, with only two underground railway lines and an erratic bus service.

Freedom is written all over the most famous of scooter movie sequences, in which Audrey Hepburn rides pillion on Gregory Peck's Vespa through the Italian capital. The scooter is the means by which Hepburn's princess escapes from a life of burdensome duty and tedious formality. So enchanted is she by its power to confer a sense of blissful irresponsibility that she cannot resist grabbing the handlebars (right outside the Guardian bureau, as it happens) and setting off on a hair-raising ride down Via del Plebiscito.

The problem is that the Romans themselves seem to have decided Roman Holiday was not so much a comedy flick as an educational video. Sixty years later, the city's scooter riders show the same blithe disregard for the presence of pedestrians and motorists as did Hepburn's Princess Anne. There was a survey a few years ago which found that about 40% really believed the highway code did not apply to them. Red lights are treated as irrelevant, as are stop signs. And the unwritten law of the Rome traffic is that scooter riders take precedence over all other road users, including pedestrians.

Seeing the near-misses this causes, as pedestrians shrink back from zebra crossings and car drivers repeatedly hit the brake to avoid crashing, visitors sometimes remark that it is a miracle no one gets hurt. Well, indeed, it would be if that were the case. But it isn't.

With one exception, everyone I know who has ridden a scooter in Rome has had an accident. And one died. Take a long drive across the city and it's two-to-one that you'll come across a scene involving a scooter lying on its side with a stationary car nearby and a huddle of people, either peering over a prone figure or gesticulating energetically.

The moral of this story? Whether you're in Mumbai or Middlesbrough, by all means buy that scooter. But since you're not in Rome, do not do as the Romans do.