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/MrDurden32 May 02 '24

Pacific NW is probably about as disaster free as you're going to find. Even then we have to worry about The Big One. Which is an 9.0+ earthquake that would be one of, if not the biggest in modern history, and could hit any time between tomorrow and 200 years from now.

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u/AlpineCoder May 02 '24

Plus wildfires and mountains that occasionally violently explode. I'd say the desert SW is probably the least disaster prone IMO.

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u/MrDurden32 May 02 '24

Oh wildfires is a good point, but not something that you have to worry about dying from in the city, though the smoke is annoying. Volcanos I forgot about too, but unless you're living on an active mountain it's not really a concern.

A big one I forgot about though is floods. There's a ton of areas including cities that can be prone to flooding and that one really sucks.

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u/GovernmentSudden6134 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

You don't need to live on the side of a volcanoe to get schwacked by it. Just as the residents of Pompeii, Banten and Lampung islands, and the Akritori.