In Piazza San Marco, I observed what happened as a huge wave of traffic swung around the circle and encountered another wave of traffic merging in from a large avenue. On the freeways, it's even more chaos, with rich people in Porsches and Lamborghinis slicing past Fiats at 100 miles per hour. Most freeway intersections are designed as well as their American counterparts, but the oldest ones have sharp and treacherous ramps. They were never engineered for 80 mph traffic. The difference between the United States and Italy has to do with drivers' tolerance for being cut off.
American drivers hate it.
They honk and swear and shoot at each other when someone else cuts them off. Italian drivers take it for granted that they will be cut off, so for them, it's just a little more stress but nothing serious. They honk only when they have to brake really, really hard. You find a spot where you can see oncoming traffic for at least a hundred feet. You wait for a gap in the traffic, until the next car has about a hundred and fifty feet to brake for you.