You have to lose the fear. I wasn't comfortable driving as a teenager, but by the time I was 20 or so I had become used to chicago's cruicible of bad driving, the Dan Ryan Expressway.
I started driving using only smaller, slower roads and when traffic was light on other roads. However I didn't have this fog you speak of or the metal problems. I lacked practice and that is what made me not like to drive. I knew driver's ed had not taught me a damn thing about how to drive. Slowly I gained that practice.
Maybe that is what you really need. I would suggest a driving school, not a driver's ed school, but a real driving school where you go out on a track and push a car to it's limits. There are several but they cost money. This is what I should have done, it would have helped me much earlier. Another choice would be to look up your local SCCA chapter and see if they have an autocross course.
Anyway my idea here is one of increasing the skills you have in controling the car. Once with that in place, it should be easier to concentrate on the task of dealing with traffic, signal lights, etc.
Another thing that may help in driving, with regards to traffic, signal lights, etc is bicycling in a vehicular manner. Much of my skill driving in traffic was developed while bicycling.
BTW, I also note that you mentioned missing a red light in chicago. Many of the signal lights, stop signs, etc in chicago proper are very poorly placed. There is one particular nonsenically located light that I have technically gone through because it is invisible to me in my car. The angle of the road and my sightline out the top of my windshield make the light itself hard to see (not even visible unless I ducked my head down and looked up) combined with the fact that this T intersection is in the middle of a bridge where one doesn't expect an intersection and well... I caught it just in time as I saw traffic coming from the other way ended up stopping ahead of the stop line but out of the way.
Just this past weekend I stopped at an intersection where I *remembered* a stop sign being there. It was totally obscured by a tree, other signs, light pole, etc now. I only stopped because I remembered it being there. It wasn't visible until I was *at* the stop line.
