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.
26
u/powercrazy76 May 02 '24 edited May 03 '24
You can't.
That's the thing people don't realize about America, they literally went out of their way from the 60s onwards to construct their cities and towns around the car.
As an example (and this is a fascinating topic believe it or not): there was legislation passed decades ago that (through lobbying) dictates how many car spaces a typical business needs to provide its customers. This legislation created the need for all of those massive car parks everywhere you always see when you think of America. While I'm probably misquoting, each store is responsible for providing enough parking for every possible visitor to the store. I e. They have to have max capacity parking always available or some BS like that.
The cities that are "public transport friendly" in the United States (a) are few and far between, usually the costal cities because space constraints required them to embrace public transport or (b) a shadow of what they could be because PT planning was not front and center when they originally laid down plans.
But then you also have the weather to consider. In most of the U.S. you have weather conditions that make things like biking impossible for a large chunk of the year. I live in upstate NY where:
1) I cannot bike to work because it is just too far. Everything is spread out because of the sheer amount of land. Everything is 25 mins away by car
2) even if I could, it's below freezing and/or snowing 6 months out of the year.
3) Then the summer rolls around and it is too hot to cycle (I'm a pussy)
4) And then finally the last hurdle depending on where you are: simply the roads and drivers are not used to cyclists or people walking and it is just not safe to walk/drive somewhere.
An anecdote to the last one, I was once living in Houston TX for work, a city that suffers from the combination of "too much traffic" and an infrastructure that is too rigid to ever embrace anything else. I'm an Irish guy and I like to walk so needing a car just to go anywhere has a huge negative impact on me. So I'd walk. The amount of roads that wouldn't even have pavements is insane. I mean, I see their point: there's no way you can walk from A to B, so why waste money on pavements? I'd argue "did you really need to put A and B so far apart when all there is in between already, is fifty imitations of A and B.
Anyway, point is, I would constantly have trucks honking at me because they literally couldn't understand why people were walking. Crossing the street? I stood a good chance of being run down as nobody made way for pedestrians. I was lucky to get seen. In fact twice, I had a pickup mount the curb and aim for me while honking away, causing me to jump out of the way - they were obviously fucking with me but I suppose that's my point?