Before my trip to Italy a few years back soemone pointed me at a website that was all about how a foreigner should deal with Italian drivers. SInce my wife and I were going to spend most of six weeks driving around in a rental car, I studied the advice on that website very carefully.
I think the most useful advice for me was "Don't ever look in your rear-view mirror, or you may have a heart attack."
Once I got used to everybody else driving as if they were in the Grand Prix de Monaco, the driving became very easy and I didn't worry about the cars that hung two inches from my rear bumper before passing on a blind turn.
The difference between Italian drivers and Boston drivers, IMHO, is that Italians know what they and their cars can do and are aware of what's going on around them at all times, which lets them drive fast and seemingly recklessly without that many accidents. Boston drivers, on the other hand, find driving so boring that they put all their attention on their cellphones, jabbering and texting away constantly, while ignoring such extraneous distractions as traffic lights, stop signs, one-way signs, children or old ladies in crosswalks, or other vehicles on the road. A couple of times a week we have news reports of someone driving into a house or store or off a bridge because they forgot which was the brake pedal or what the steering wheel was for (it's for holding up your newspaper?).
As an old fuddy-duddy, I have a bad habit of coming to a stop at stop signs, but I always check my rear-view mirror to see if the cars behind me have noticed me.
Eric
