>>1922417>Why do Americans drive so far? What happens as soon as your out the city?The lower 48 is literally as large as Europe to the Urals and larger than Australia in both land and total area, and that's without Alaska. Canada is also the exact same size as the US with Alaska, you can basically drive 6,000km across either country (the US has slightly more land area than Canada but Canada has slightly more total area due to water). Continental/cross state passenger trains aren't even remotely as common in the US as they are in Europe so people just drive or fly. There are literally twice as many cars in the US as households, while Europe is the exact opposite. Once you're out of the city and the suburbs it's mostly just /out/ with some small rural towns sprinkled in between. As is the case in the interior western US where the average distance between cities with more than 200k people is around 300 miles (480km) and there are lots of wilderness areas in between. Although in some smaller states in the east the entire state is basically suburbs/rural land and parts of the plains are basically just farmland between cities.
tl:dr - The US is huge and the population spread is disproportionate. Suburbs, rural areas, farms, innawoods, occasionally wilderness areas.
>Or are the cities just so big and congested it takes hours to get out?In bigger cities it takes up to several hours to get out of due to congestion because there is a public transport problem in the biggest US cities, some cities are worse than others. Suburbs can stretch on a bit more but are usually less congested and quicker to drive through. Once you get out on the open highway in rural/remote areas there is almost never congestion unless there's an accident, a bottleneck, or a holiday/event.
