In reply to Removed UserBoingBoing:
Haha, someone has spent too much time in the UK. If you were driving in Europe you would complain about traffic behaviour that has a little bit more affect on your health and wellbeing!
Between Italy and France, the following practices are standard (as in "happen regularly pretty much every time I am out driving", not "happened this one time and I'm not going to forget it").
- Overtaking into oncoming traffic and expecting the vehicle you are overtaking and the oncoming one to squeeze over to their edges so there is enough space for 3 abreast on a 2 lane road.
- Horn honking, dangerous overtaking and other generalised impatience with anyone who is driving at the speed limit. This ususally only slacks off about 20kmph above the speed limit.
- Long vehicles on mountain roads use both sides of the road, if you happen to meet them on an area of road where they are doing this, you drive off the side of the road or you crash, they do not stop.
- Overtaking when there is nowhere near enough room to pass and expecting both oncoming and vehicle being overtaken to brake sharply to enable the manoeuvre.
- Cutting corners where there is no visibility and a hair-trigger-reaction swerve is needed to avoid hitting any oncoming vehicle.
- Cutting corners or just plain drifting across the road for no reason without looking in the mirrors to see if other vehicles are coming from behind.
The sum effect of all this is that one must be constantly looking in ones mirrors to see when the person behind does something stupid necessitating that you have to react to avoid a crash and that one much generally drive in such a way as to expect that traffic ahead and oncoming traffic will regularly dangerously violate the road rules. It is stressful, even after years and years of experience of it.
The average driver in the UK is very considerate and law abiding by comparison!