Depends heavily where you live. Rural places can be an hour drive to the closest grocery store. For me, I live about 5 minute drive from stores and my work. But I cannot feasibly walk to where I want to go, there is zero sidewalks in my area and cars go at least 35 mph on the slow neighborhood roads and 50 mph on the busier main roads (less than 3 minute drive to get to either one). Bus and train infrastructure is basically non-existent so not an option. My only option is risk my life on a bike on the shoulder of the main road (since theres no bike lanes) and hope the weather isn’t bad or I have to drive a car .

It kinda depends on where you live. I live in the suburbs near a few large metropolitan areas and I do have a supermarket within a 10 minute walk of me, and a bigger supermarket a 30 min walk away, but there are definitely places where you need a car to go shopping cuz theres no sidewalks or all the roads are like 45mph+ and really only designed for car transit.

I’ve got family who live in Texas and they say that there’s lots of places that are drive thru, like banks and dry cleaners and stuff.

I had a coworker at one of my previous jobs transfer to our US branch from the UK and he said that a lot of his friends were asking him if he was gonna visit Disney World, since he was moving to “just outside of New York City” (read: Pennsylvania, lmao) He said a lot of them were shocked to realize that its like an 18 hour drive from NYC to Disney World in Florida.

Another thing about that job, there was no realistic way for me to get to it by public transit. It was a half an hour drive, but about 3 hours of combined public transit + walking and needed me to take two trains and a bus.

It varies wildly depending on where you go. I think the worst-case scenario in terms of car-built cities would be someplace like Phoenix, Arizona. Visiting that city, I gained an appreciation for what it must be like to have a physical handicap that affects your mobility, because being in Phoenix without a car is comparable to having a disability. You cannot go anywhere on your own two feet in any reasonable length of time. It’s the kind of place where you need to find a Walmart to buy a loaf of bread. The closest thing to a corner store is going to be a gas station.

Things around me aren’t that far per se, but you have to cross a 45mph road (where people regularly drive 55-60 because it’s designed like a highway) along several sections of unconnected sidewalk if you want to get there without a car. The sidewalks are 4ft wide at most and have no separation from the car lanes so you have to walk with cars whizzing by just a couple feet from you. There’s also no shade.

For reference - it takes 5 minutes to drive to the nearest grocery store, but walking it’s 31 minutes with the unpleasant conditions I mentioned. So I’ve never walked there. I could bike and it would take 10 minutes, but biking along cars at 50mph doesn’t sound fun. I also live on a bike path, but it goes so far out of the way that it would take the same amount of time as if I walked.

It’s a two-hour round trip walk to the nearest convenience store, and its also through rough terrain and lawns that people don’t cut

I could easily walk to a grocery store in 10 minutes; however, there’s no sidewalks, no streetlights if it was dark, and I’d have to cross a road with a speed limit of 55mph. On the way I’d pass a gun store, so maybe I could pick one up and pop off a couple rounds into the air to make a temporary crosswalk.

I live in rural Ohio and I drive about 40 miles (65 km) round trip a day just getting to and from work, and that’s pretty average for a rural area.

The nearest grocery store and back is about a 15 mile (25 km) round trip.

In the rural areas, which account for most of the land area of the US, things are far enough apart that it makes it impossible to survive without a vehicle.

Distances in North America tend to be measured in hours of driving at highway speeds (usually 65mph/105kmh, but sometimes extra time added going through cities). Houston, Texas for example you can get from one edge of town to the other in an hour, plus up to an extra hour in traffic. The transit options in every metro area are different. The only thing is that people in suburbia are in the middle of a maze that would take 25 minutes on foot to get out of to the nearest convenience store (corner shop). A habit of going every other day for light shopping trips on the way from work is less common and often limited to retirees and non-working parents. What’s more common is doing a large cartful of shopping from every week to even once a month, and fitting it all in your monster SUV or pickup truck.

That said lifestyles can vary across the US, suburban vs rural, like New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles will each have their own characteristics with how far things are, how far they feel and, how developed transit is. Between cities, transit is rather disconnected without a car, you have minimal and inconvenient coach bus services and trains that might show up 3 times a week.

I’m in the uk too but I’m out in the northern countryside, just to get to the village newsagents is a 15-20 minute walk and it’s about 12 miles to the nearest supermarket. Even in the UK there are places where you have to drive to almost everywhere.

The big thing to know is that things spread out as you go from East to West.

On the East Coast, New England area, everything is pretty tightly packed. On the West Coast? Not so much.

When I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I had family visit from Sweden, so we asked them what they wanted to do.

“We want to go to Disneyland!”

OK, not saying we CAN’T, but it’s 13 hours in the car assuming no traffic.

My refrigerator is annoyingly far from my desk chair.

At my current job, I’m about 45 minutes away by car. Car is also the only option. Before I moved closer, I was actually an hour and a half away, so 90 minutes one way, or 3 hours per day worth of driving.

It’s too expensive to live in the cities themselves, so I have to live further out and just commute.

Closest wal-mart is about 30 minutes away, but there’s smaller stores closer if I dont’t need much.

I haven’t mentioned walking/biking because there’s no point in walking where I live. There’s next to no shoulder on the road, and it’s 45MPH (72KPH) roads with mostly large pickup trucks driving on it, so it’s not safe to walk.

For reference, I live in the American south, so it’s somewhat rural.

The East Coast can be as dense as Europe, because that built up quickly before cars were a rhing. People in cities can walk everywhere, and driving is slower due to traffic

The hills stayed rural and can take forever.

Midwest is the stereotypical America you have to drive everywhere. If you try to walk somewhere in a small town, everyone is going to stop to offer a ride assuming your car broke down

The “fly over” states are giant agricultural farms with nothing in between them. Walking is impossible but you can likely get on a freeway/highway quickly and drive times may be similar to the Midwest, just less options

The west Coast is also densely populated, but happened after the popularity of cars and most cities are designed for cars not pedestrians.

It is fucked here unless you own property already in the good parts or you are upper class income and can move your ass into the good parts despite the obsene costs.

It depends on where you live. I have multiple stores around me I walk to all the time, and it takes 20 minutes to drive through the city with no traffic.

But I’ve also lived where you absolutely need a car because everything is so spread out just going to the store would be 15 minutes in a car.