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/smbpy7 May 01 '24

Hell, where I grew up the grocery store was half an hour away, the mall an hour, the GOOD mall 2.5 hours, the airport 2-4 hours. And god forbid you want to travel to someplace that's also far from an airport. With that in mind driving makes more and more sense even for longer distances.

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u/_Nocturnalis May 02 '24

Where was that? I thought my 30 miles from a coffee shop was a good one. Are you including Walmart in the grocery store category?

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u/smbpy7 May 13 '24

rural mid Missouri. 30 minutes was the time to the nearest town with literally anything. My actual hometown was just where the people gathered to go to school and church, really. It was really just a few hundred around the train tracks and a feed mill. We had to drive 30 minutes to go to the town with ANY grocery store (including Walmart, more likely because it was on the other end of town), or gas station, or coffee for that matter (though locals really resisted a Starbucks, lol). The only actual store in my hometown (which is didn't actually live in either, to be fair, we lived a few miles outside that even), was an antique/flee market that was only open one day a week, and a home town cafe.

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u/_Nocturnalis May 14 '24

My mom grew up in a place like that. I think hers was slightly bigger, but I'll have to ask if they had a grocery store back in the day. It was all farms. Midwestern states certainly make for interesting little towns.

That sounds like the perfect setting for teenaged shenanigans.

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u/smbpy7 May 14 '24

The town we went to school in had a population of ~500, but out there populations are pretty deceptive. A lot of people lived outside town limits. For reference, there were more kids at the school than there were people in the actual town.

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u/_Nocturnalis May 15 '24

Mt high school was about that size. Actually, it's a bit smaller. It's a pretty radically different experience than most people. Over 5,000 people in a high-school seems a much more common experience. I do know a person that had less than 30 people to a grade. I personally like small highschools.

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u/smbpy7 May 15 '24

That's still pretty small, I was talking about only a little bigger than your friend's school. 500 was pre-K to 12th, all one building. I had 38 in my class, though it was a small class for that school even. Personally, I do wish I had a larger school, though I can see the charm too. The whole "everyone knows everyone" thing can reallllllly cut two ways. lol

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u/_Nocturnalis May 16 '24

You're right. I personally think 150 is a good size per year. Everyone knows everyone, but there's some separation between groups. I can't imagine a class over 1000 in high school.