It is well known that driving while talking on a cell phone greatly increases the risk of an accident. But what about being distracted by art, particularly if it happens to be the hard-to-miss showpiece of a roundabout? Take the sculpture of a pack of cyclists in a traffic circle here on a route to Lake Varese, in northern Italy. Drivers have been doing double takes ever since brightly colored metal cutouts were erected last year when Varese hosted the International Cycling Union's world championship. The riders, circling a plane on a pedestal, are actually portraits of lawmakers from the Northern League, the Italian party that has one of its power bases in the area. Politico spotting has become a new attraction at the circle. One distressed citizen, Lena Baldi, said she barely averted an accident last year that had been caused by gawking drivers trying to identify who's who. 'Art concerns us all,' she wrote to Varese News, a local news site. 'But I would not like that absorption with these artworks included the involvement of a tow truck and doctors at the emergency room.' Italy is something of a latecomer to the European practice -- especially popular in Britain, France and Switzerland -- of substituting traditional intersections with roundabouts. Increased safety has been the main incentive: the general consensus is that these road junctions are safer and they improve mobility 'if they are built in the correct way and if the conditions for them are right,' explained Francesco Mazziotta, an engineer at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. But the jury is still out on the countrywide Italian efforts -- not, for instance, common in Britain -- to decorate the intersections, usually with works of contemporary art. Predictably, the blogosphere has bristled with commentary. But even more qualified observers have gone on record to criticize aesthetic choices dictated by 'the whims of town councilors responsible for road conditions working side by side with urban Dcor departments,' as went the sneer from the Italian Antiquarians' Association in the June issue of Il Giornale dell'Arte, the Italian edition of The Art Newspaper. 'Lists are difficult to draft,' the essay read, 'but if a patient photographer' were to 'shoot everything encountered while traveling, we are certain that we would have a snapshot of an Italy entrusted to the bad taste of those who can make decisions about sensitive questions like urban Dcor without supervision.' Indeed, the pragmatists extol the roundabout's virtue, with little heed for artistic judgment. 'They work 24/7, 365 days a year and you don't have to worry about power shortages,' said Claudio Cicero, a former Vicenza councilman responsible for traffic and mobility, who substituted dozens of intersections for roundabouts during his seven-year tenure. When he ran (unsuccessfully) for mayor last year, Cicero chose a roundabout as the symbol of his conservative ticket. Convincing people of the advantages 'wasn't easy at first' because people resist change, he said. But Cicero said he pushed, not only because roundabouts are safer, but 'they also reduce the presence of beggars and windshield cleaners at intersections,' something he deemed -- quite in the spirit of the immigrant-wary right in Italy -- 'a positive collateral effect.' Criteria used to choose the decorative artwork changes from city to city, though most commonly it is a local decision. In Ragusa, Sicily, city officials recently posted a December deadline for citizens and artists to submit designs for the decor of a new roundabout. The catch: winners will also sponsor construction of the centerpiece. 'The time of the fatted calf is gone,' said Salvatore Scifo, administrative chief of the municipal cabinet. Not everything will pass muster, he conceded. 'A statue of a nude, for me, might not constitute a work of appropriate art,' he said, musing on its potential as a distraction. In the case of the Northern League decor for Buguggiate's circle, the criticism has turned political. 'It's ridiculous, an exaltation of ego,' said Giovanni Martina, a former regional lawmaker with the Refounded Communist Party, which has staged protests against the roundabout statues, for example, dressing them up or sticking on Pinocchio noses. Martina noted the proliferation of roundabouts locally -- 'all of which have to be decorated' -- and asked: 'Are they worth it?' Giuseppe Leoni, the architect who designed the cycling pack and an original founder of the Northern League (he includes himself as one of the riders) suggested a compromise: add cyclists from other political parties. 'It's a large roundabout,' he said. 'They could ride all the way around.' 