I drove for a bit through Italy once. Mostly in the rural areas, but a bit in Rome too. The latter was scary because of the scooters, not so much the cars. Anyway, the cultural driving norm there is, or was then, different than the US where we're taught to accelerate and brake fairly gently. If you're at a stop, and there's another stop a couple hundred feet away, you don't gun the accelerator and then slam on the brakes. In Italy, failing to drive that way would piss people off. I tried to adapt to the local norms some, but people were always riding my tail, not so much due to lack of speed but for my unwillingness to accelerate quickly.
For a variety of reasons I think the cultural norm of accelerating and braking smoothly is superior, but nonetheless it's fair to see that in Italy I was more in the "wrong." When driving it's important to behave in expected ways, and I wasn't.
But here... in crowded urban areas...WTF is wrong with people who gun the accelerator? You aren't getting anywhere any faster, you're just likely to kill someone.
