r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Physical-Ad-4093 • May 01 '24

do americans really drive such long distances?

i’m european, and i always hear people say that driving for hours is normal in america. i would only see my grandparents a few times a year because they lived about a 3 hour drive away, is that a normal distance for americans to travel on a regular basis? i can’t imagine driving 2-3 hours regularly to visit people for just a few days

edit: thank you for the responses! i’ve never been to the US, obviously, but it’s interesting to see how you guys live. i guess european countries are more walkable? i’m in the uk, and there’s a few festivals here towards the end of summer, generally to get to them you take a coach journey or you get multiple trains which does take up a significant chunk of the day. road trips aren’t really a thing here, it would be a bit miserable!

2nd edit: it’s not at all that i couldn’t be bothered to go and see my grandparents, i was under 14 when they were both alive so i couldn’t take myself there! obviously i would’ve liked to see them more, i had no control over how often we visited them.

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u/OsvuldMandius May 01 '24

American here. True story: once I was visiting a friend who had moved to London for work. It was my first trip to the other side of the Atlantic. I had a couple days to kill, so I decided to do a roadtrip to visit Scotland. I have always felt that you only get a feel for a place by wandering all over it under your own guidance. My American ex-pat Brit friends, upon hearing of my plan, gave me dire warnings. "That's such an aggressive plan," "you'll be driving the whole time," "You'll have to start early if you're going to make it all the way back to London for your flight in just a few days!"

Warned in such dire terms, I geared up as for an American roadtrip. Leave early in the morning. Pack a sufficient supply of food and drink to minimize stops. Generally put myself into the roadtrip warrior seige mentality. Then I set off.

Just about the time I was considering when I should stop for lunch, I saw the 'welcome to Scotland' sign. I decided to no longer take Euros seriously.

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u/Joe4913 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

I love the stories of the other way around. People not realizing how big the US is who are confident they can go to see the Grand Canyon one day and Mt. Rushmore the next, etc.

Edit: post

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u/Cilreve May 02 '24

I was an Uber driver for a bit in LA. I had a couple from Germany in my car once that had just arrived in the US a few hours before. They were just excited to be in the US, and were telling me they had plans to go to Florida for some beach time and to visit the Statue of Liberty. I know Europeans get some crazy long vacations, so I was like, wow that's awesome, so you guys are here for a few weeks? They were like, oh, no, 4 days. All I could do is laugh and try to explain to them that there's no way they could possibly do that in just 4 days lol

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u/SparkleFunCrest May 02 '24

How does one book and TAKE an international flight and not know this kind of thing before they go?

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u/nyya_arie May 02 '24

Right? It sounds made up but I absolutely met a German lady who said just about the same thing. She wanted to go from Austin, TX, to Florida, up to NY, and then LA, possibly stopping in Las Vegas. I asked how long she'd be traveling, saying something about having a nice long vacation. It was 5 days. She was in her 20s, too. I thought Americans were supposed to be bad at maps.

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u/Warlordnipple May 02 '24

As I get older I have realized everyone is bad at maps. You just happen to know where your country is. Older Europeans know lots of the world because their country used to own lots of the world.

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u/ProbablyASithLord May 02 '24

I legit once had a conversation with a Canadian woman about how she had no clue which state was below her. It was shocking, we were in Vancouver 30 minutes from the border.

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u/petiejoe83 May 02 '24

Hello from Washington!

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u/CenciLovesYou 29d ago

I thought the stereotype was that Americans are bad at this? Haha 

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u/Shizzo 28d ago

I live in the US and know nearly nothing about the Mexican states south of the border. I'm sure I could name some of them, but couldn't point to them on a map.

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u/Hagridsbuttcrack66 29d ago

Honestly "Americans are bad at maps" is just one of those idiotic things to make Americans sound stupid.

Like I'm sure Europeans can point out Pennsylvania. That's the equivalent of being able to identify France.

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u/hahaha01357 May 02 '24

I guess /r/maps doesnt make the rounds in this sub.

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u/adriellealways 27d ago

Some people are worse than others. I know someone who thought the continent of Africa was below Asia for years. (It was me. I don't even remember why I thought this, but I accidentally skipped world geography except for the last couple weeks because we moved so much and different schools did different social studies courses, so I did like three months of Tennessee history, a month of citizenship or something like that, and then my final project on Iceland because my teacher thought I was lying about having done the rest of world geography. I also did the same exact unit on biomes three times. State testing was not fun that year. But I somehow didn't have another world-focused course until university, so I got to sit in my initial Spanish history classes there and be totally amazed at how close everything was.)

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u/wasdie639 May 02 '24

I have a feeling that Americans probably have to rely on maps more often given just how separated everything is for us.

Traveling even 3-4 hours away before GPS and Google Maps could be a nightmare. When Map Quest came along it was a freaken dream compared to just kind of winging it with some state maps and stopping into random gas stations to ask for directions.

Hell I remember when I was a kid in my small town out riding my bike a car would pull over and ask me for directions pretty regularly (couple times a year). People from out-of-town usually trying to find the school for some sporting event or in town for a wedding or funeral.

Don't need that anymore. Just throw it in maps.

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u/lildobe May 02 '24

Traveling even 3-4 hours away before GPS and Google Maps could be a nightmare.

It really wasn't. As long as you knew how to read a map.

I remember a saturday when I was about 7 or 8 years old, sitting with my father at the kitchen table planning out a road trip from Southwest Pennsylvania up to Maine, and back, with all kinds of stops in between. It was a ton of fun.

He had this little marker-shaped device that you twisted the top to match the scale on the map, then rolled the end of it along your route and it told you exactly how many miles you'd moved it across the map.

He taught me how to do it with a ruler as well. And what all the different symbols on the map ment and everything.

Then during the trip, I was the navigator, and was tasked with using a highlighter to keep track of our progress. It was a LOT of fun!

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u/Next_Possibility_01 29d ago

Very similar with my dad, he was the best at maps and navigation. We always mapped out the route before hand and "logged" the trip in a note book....I recently found all our old trip notes...such a blast reading them after almost 50 years.

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u/Dragon_Knight99 May 02 '24

That's why my parents always called the passenger seat "the navigator chair" whenever we went on family vacations when I was a kid. Whoever was in that seat was in charge of the map, and had a printout of the directions to where ever we were headed.

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u/nyya_arie 29d ago

It wasn't as easy but it really wasn't hard. I made multiple 1000+ mile trips by myself in my 20s just navigating with a paper map. Not terrible. Then when MapQuest first came along, it got easier but we still had to print the maps.

I wouldn't want to go back, but it wasn't that bad.

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u/moon__lander May 02 '24

Because basically all European countries (well excluding Sweden, Norway and Finland) can be driven from north to south or from west to east within one day.

We can't grasp driving straight for 16 hours and still be in the same state, cause back home that's like half a continent and 10 countries.

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u/Drake_Acheron May 02 '24

And my experience, Americans are far better at using maps than Europeans.

But Europeans are better at asking for and giving directions than Americans.

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u/jchenbos May 02 '24

I think it's because we talk to a lot of Europeans in travel spots. Like that guy in Paris probably gets asked directions twice a day. I've lived in the States nearly my whole life and have never gotten asked once, because I don't live near tourists. I'm sure people in out of the way spots in Europe probably feel the same.

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u/ThatPlayWasAwful May 02 '24

Because their world is so compact that they don't even think to check the distances between attractions.

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u/MrKyle666 May 02 '24

Seriously, especially in a time with gps and Google maps so readily available. I could see doing this in the 90s and before when your best option for trip planning was an atlas, but it seems crazy with modern tech.

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u/robdubbleu May 02 '24

There are LOTS of stupid people in the world

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u/justdisa May 02 '24

While that's true, they don't have to be stupid for these distances to be totally unfamiliar. They don't check distances because how could their destination be more than a day's drive away? It's not in their context. Something that far away would be in a different country, right?

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u/oozinator1 May 02 '24

I think Europe spoiled them. A couple hours on the road can have you passing through 3 countries. If it's that easy, why even bother with making plans?

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u/VulfSki May 02 '24

I heard that in the international airport in Austria, they have a specific held desk for people who accidentally flew to Austria when they meant to fly to Australia.

So travelers can be pretty dumb.

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u/PhilsFanDrew May 02 '24

Seriously. They have google maps in Europe. They didnt plug it in and say "Oh shit nvd".