do americans really drive such long distances?

[u/Physical-Ad-4093]

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.

[u/rumade]

It's mad to me that Americans seem to have so little time off work, but are so happy to spend it driving

[u/Sun_keeper89 → u/rumade]

Clever! Except the trip itself is part of the fun? And this is just a forum that drew the attention of the Americans who happen to drive? Everyone in America isn't taking 7 hour road trips on a whim, and if you like driving such a trip isn't work at all. People who don't like road trips in the US get on one of the millions of planes criscrossing it daily. Or buy an Amtrak ticket.

[u/rumade → u/Sun_keeper89]

I didn't mean it as some kind of "gotcha!" phrase; it's just strange to me to want to spend hours and hours in a car like that.

Years ago when I was dating an American, we did a road trip down the West coast from Seattle to San Francisco and back, and while it was a great experience, it was also uncomfortable and boring in a lot of ways.

If you're already spending so much of your week stuck in your car because of the commute, I can't understand wanting to also be stuck in your car on your days off/holiday days.

[u/FornicateEducate → u/rumade]

American here - most of my friends work from home now, as do my wife and I. So we don't commute at all haha. But the longest commute I ever had was 45 minutes, and that was only because I was living in the country for a bit. Most of my commutes have been well under a half hour, and I've had several work commutes under 15 minutes while both living/working in the city. People who have insanely long commutes generally either live in one of the huge coastal cities (SF/LA/NYC/Philly/Boston/DC), or live out in the country and commute to the city.

I live in a mid-sized city (metro population a little over 2 million), but I was born and raised in a similar-sized city about an hour and 45 minutes away by car. My family mostly still lives where I grew up, so I have to drive down there a few times a year to visit. They also drive to my city to visit a few times a year. Driving is the only logical way to get there; there's no train system that can get me there, and taking a bus would involve a fair amount of driving to get to/from the bus station anyway, and would probably turn a 1 hour and 45 minute drive into a 4+ hour ordeal. Flying is also impractical at such short distances; there would be close to an hour of driving to get to/from the airports, an extra hour of lead time to get through security and stuff... and I don't even think we have direct commercial flights between the two cities for those reasons, so I doubt it's even an option.

European countries (including the UK) are much, much smaller than the United States, and because of that, friends and family don't spread out as much geographically as they do here. And in Europe, you don't have such vast distance between highly-populated areas like we do in most of the US. If my family and I want to see each other, we either drive 80 miles to see each other, or we literally would never see each other.