Actually that seems very Japanese in a weird way - they might be trusting themselves and everyone else to follow rules precisely, thus avoiding all the accidents and obviating the need for seatbelts.

Is driving actually kind of easy in Japan for this reason? I’ve never had a car while there. It’s wild how different Japan and China are despite being neighbors. I can’t think of a European neighbor pair that is so different.

One is an island nation that's been fairly open, the other had waves of isolationism, famines, and only recently opened up their markets in the late 80s. Private car ownership was not on the table until probably 25 years ago.

But to play your game, Switzerland and Italy, especially southern Italy, are very different.

Your counterexample is not even close to being accurate. Italy and Switzerland have much more in common than China and Japan. Italian is even one of the official languages of Switzerland. Switzerland and Italy are both essentially federations of distinct provinces. Both are recognizably Western European. China and Japan are worlds apart, as are China and India.

My main point was that there's plenty of reasons for China and Japan to be different, especially when it comes to driving norms. Are you surprised as the other poster was about these differences between China and Japan?

And going back to the original intent: would you say driving in Zurich and driving in Naples are two distinct experiences?

When I visited, Austria-Hungary were very different. So were Germany-Poland. And let's not even talk about Finland-Russia.

I mean, Europe had an iron curtain for decades and that shows at the boundaries.

I can: Germany and (European) Russia. They are about the same distance as Tokyo to Shanghai. They have wildly different driving cultures! Also, China is the size of a continent. Did you drive in all the different regions? I doubt it. Do what region are you extrapolating from?

Ahh.. a bit too trusting to the point of individual risk in a high trust society.