All very true and accurate. If you thought smoking was bad in the US you should have visited the UK where people also smoked in movie theatres on buses and worst of all on the Underground. It ook 31 people getting burned to death in King's Cross station to put an end to that.

You mentioned cars but didn't mention, bikes, skateboards and roller skates none of which required helmets or knee and elbow pads.

As to phone books. I lived in Bahrain from 1985-2010. That was still the norm there. One time in LA in about 2007 or so I was in someone's office and asked the 20 something receptionist for a phone book. She looked at me as if I had asked for some incomprehensible piece of equipment she had never heard of and proceeded to look up the number that I wanted on the internet which is not nearly as much fun as stumbling into a phone booth to find the phone book hanging by a metal wire with half the pages ripped out by some vandal.