It's also a space thing. As a Brit the thing I didn't get so well before going there is how sodding big the US is, and how normal it's citizens think it is to drive to the next town over which just happens to be an hour or so away.
I was doing just this with a German foreign exchange student in Missouri once. He commented about halfway there that, if he were at home, we'd be in Poland already.
Americans will continue to drive automobiles more than Europeans if gas prices were to go to parity. Our mass transit infrastructure is laughable by comparison. Also, we're way more spread out than Europe is.
