[BE911SC]

As alluded to above, Americans are a competitive culture and we will not yield. We will drive any way we wish, even sit in the left lane and hold up faster traffic, and we'll get mad at the cop who pulls us over. Traffic circles in the U.S. come to mind. People race into them at speed because they are not going to yield. I call them Stukas. In Europe they also tend to do that but not because they are a-holes, but because they all know how traffic circles work and they're not trying to piss each other off intentionally.

Driving on I-5 between Tacoma and Seattle yesterday I watched a truck clot (more than four big-rigs bunched together) occupy all four lanes of the freeway. There were as many as eight of them, all jockeying to get around one another, and they had all four lanes blocked. HOV lane was being used by SOVs just to get around the clot. Never used to see trucks in the #3 lane, let alone all four. (Aggressive driving is way up in the Seattle area too but that's a whole other rant.)

I do enjoy my Europe trips. Drive over there and you may not want to come home.