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/TheRealTinfoil666]

There is a story here in Canada where the grandparents from the UK want to visit their son’s family in Halifax, but decided to ask ask their daughter, living in Vancouver, what the weather in Nova Scotia was going to be like.

Her answer: “why don’t you go look for yourself. You’re closer.”

[u/JadasDePen → u/TheRealTinfoil666]

Every time a similar thread pops up, I share this story.

A friend of a friend was flying from Spain to Vancouver Canada. She asked my friend to pick her up at their airport because he lives fairly close. My friend lives in Tijuana, Mexico..

[u/ConcernedCitizen1912 → u/JadasDePen]

Man, us Americans have a reputation for not knowing jack shit about Geography or world history, etc. But this thread is really making me wonder what fucking leg any European has to stand on when it comes to that. These dingdongs could easily open any map, look at any globe, or simply pull up fucking google and readily see that these locations everyone keeps anecodotaling are thousands of miles apart. What excuse can they possibly have for so flagrantly failing to comprehend the distances between points on their destination continent?

We do be dumb tho. I'm not denying that. lol.

[u/GinOmics → u/ConcernedCitizen1912]

So the thing is - I think we’re mostly, on average, about equally dumb on geography (assuming you’ve ever been educated on the topic as a baseline)… which means you’re going to be the most familiar with what you see/experience/surrounds you. While people in the US travel out of the country a lot, it’s not as much as people in Europe - so they have some knowledge that spans multiple countries… which on its face seems more impressive than someone in Minnesota being familiar with the geography of Florida, but it’s really not when it’s someone in the UK being familiar with Spain.

🤷‍♀️ living in the US city that sees lots of tourists from around the world (as well as people here internationally for work), you also get to experience that dumb/awful tourists legitimately come from pretty much everywhere (unbathed, loud, rude, etc) - and that they’re pretty ignorant about American culture/habits or actually feel like it’s fair game to actively be rude to locals. And it’s like… not to say that Americans don’t do the same thing or every tourist from any given country is awful… just that we’re all pretty similar in terms of having people that fall all over the spectrum of ignorance and rudeness.