Cool post. It is all so true. I lived in Japan for 5 years and was quite amused when there was public outcry in America over the fact that there was a huge trade imbalance between Japanese cars sold to the US and US cars that were sold to Japan (I believe this uproar was during the Clinton years).
If anyone had gone to Japan and seen their roads on a normal traffic day, they would have immediately known the reason: American cars are too wide (not to mention POS’s). The few Japan residents who did buy American (for god-knows-why) forced other drivers to actually pull over whenever the American car was coming down the road the other way! Ie, on a two-lane, two-way road, the cars going the other way have to pull over so the American car can get through!
WTF is up with this? Why does everything have to be big here?