You can find fuel in just about every village in the country. Unleaded fuel (Bleifrei, sans plomb, senza piombo) is currently around Fr.1.20 per litre of standard 95 octane, good for all rental cars. Petrol stations in more remote places, such as mountain resorts, charge much more than those on routes easily accessible by tankers. Unstaffed automatic dispensers – where you feed cash or a credit card into a machine – are cheapest of all. Super-plus unleaded, 98 octane, is also widely available for a few cents more, as is diesel. Leaded fuel, also 98 octane, is less common.

Swiss motorways are signed in green, while main roads are signed in blue. Speed limits are 120kph (75mph) on motorways, 80kph (50mph) on main roads, 50kph (30mph) in urban areas, and 30kph (18mph) on speed-bumped residential streets. The Swiss are a law-abiding lot, and tend to stay inside the limit, partly because there are dozens of cameras, radars and laser traps around the country to catch offenders. If you’re caught doing 5kph above, expect a spot-fine of Fr.40; if you were 20kph above, expect Fr.200; any more and you’ll be taken to court. Most motorways have two or more lanes in each direction; some, though, have only one and ban overtaking. In tunnels, of which there are hundreds all over the country, it’s forbidden to overtake and obligatory to use dipped headlights.

You’ll see roadsigns to “places” such as Gotthard or Grand-St-Bernard as far away as Zürich or Montreux: you’re supposed to recognize automatically that these aren’t towns but Alpine pass routes. Although Switzerland has four languages, you’ll rarely have to struggle with multilingual roadsigns. Signs to specific towns are always in the language of that town: on motorways and main roads, Geneva is always “Genève”, never “Genf” or “Ginevra”. As for crossing the language border, there’ll just come a point speeding between Fribourg and Bern when you’ll notice that the exits, previously marked “Sortie”, suddenly become “Ausfahrt”. Difficulties come on the backroads, with signs marked for locals who instinctively know, when looking for the route to the Lukmanier Pass, that they should follow signs for the Passo del Lucomagno. We’ve given place names in three languages at the end of guide chapters.

Other road rules offer no surprises. Switzerland drives on the right, seatbelts are compulsory for all, and penalties for drink driving are tough (one glass of beer has you on the limit). At junctions, yellow diamonds painted on the road show who has priority; if in doubt, always give way to trams, buses and traffic coming from your right. On gradients, vehicles heading uphill have priority over those coming down, and some narrow mountain lanes have controlled times for ascent and descent. If you hear an outrageously loud triple-tone klaxon sounding on country lanes or twisting mountain roads, it means that a postbus is approaching: it always has priority, up or down, so get out of the way. In cities, it’s forbidden to overtake trams when they’re at their stops. In the winter, signs indicate where snow chains are necessary (it’s a good idea to practise fitting and removing them beforehand).