You're really putting your finger on something here which is the American attitude and sense of entitlement that infects both sides. I experienced what you are

You're really putting your finger on something here which is the American attitude and sense of entitlement that infects both sides. I experienced what you are describing when I moved to London for the last 3 years. Congestion in London is really bad, not just cars, but public transport and pedestrian traffic as well. The city has worked really hard to optimize everything for the massive movement of people. Vans and motorbikes sometimes go onto the pavement (ie. british for sidewalk), and sometimes pedestrians overflow into the road. Buses often go into the oncoming lane to get around other buses with the full expectation that oncoming traffic will make room for them. All of this happens with a fraction of the road rage that you experience on much less congested US streets. Part of it seems to just be an unspoken moral duty and perhaps even comradery of everyone doing there part to help everyone else get where they're going. That's not to say that it's all rainbows and unicorns in other countries—tube/rail commuting in London can be pretty traumatic, and if there's a strike or mechanical problems the knock-on effect through the system can be dramatic given how stretched it already is—but San Francisco transportion is drastically unoptimized (eg. BART 4-trains/hour per line vs Victoria Line 33-trains/hour) and it's not going to get better by quibbling over rolling stops and warring between drivers and cyclists. There was a time when the American people had the sense of duty and self-sacrifice to get on with massive transportation infrastructure projects like the Interstate Highway System (however misguided it may have been in hindsight), but now it's all about entitlement and NIMBYism and fighting over the crumbs from a decrepit and inadequate system.