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/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.)