Car-centric city design is a terrible mistake done by many countries. Fortunately there is a growing awareness of the negative externalites cars and car-centric urban design brings to our health, society and environment. I found youtube's https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes an excellent eye-opener

Interesting that Japan used to be much worse. Having driven regularly in Japan and the US one gets the sense that Japanese drivers are just much more attentive to following rules, possibly because the consequences for causing an accident are much more severe. It feels like 1 in 100 drivers flargrantly ignore the rules where in my city its more like 1 in 20.

It's not just that though, in Australia we have almost absurdly strict road rules (you can be fined $400+ for being a few km/h over the limit or even for your numberplate being inadequately visible etc.) yet Japanese drivers are noticeably more courteous and less prone to "hoon" behaviour than those here. They are stricter about license renewals though which must help.

It would be interesting to see how fatalities of kei cars have dropped with modern safety features, the ones from the 90s and earlier were pretty deadly in even low speed collisions.

The first thing that I think of when I read anti-car articles is: don't touch my road trips.

How is that an anti-car article? From experience I can vouch that road trips are vastly more pleasant in Japan than in the US.

NIMBY drivers