Apart from the little details there are also some major differences to be found if you compare european countries. Well, actually I can‘t really compare them all but Italy has a slightly different approach when it comes to traffic. Or to be more precise: traffic lights.

While a red traffic light in Germany is considered a rule it is more seen as being a recommendation in Italy. A red light means something like: „you might probably want to stop as there is a good chance for competing traffic from other directions“ while in Germany it means simply „stop“.

This might sound scary first but the good thing about it is that it produces much „optimized“ traffic on the one hand and less superflous stops on the other hand. It also has the advantage that people will never expect a green light to be a undisputable sign of a clear way. I don‘t really know how pedestrians fit in this game but it might be the same with both systems.

Italian traffic somehow mimics Internet standards: there are recommendations and you usually do fine folllowing them. There is, however, room for optimizations that might make you ignore one of these recommendations without actually doing any particular harm to the whole concept.