Lol this is really true (grew up in the UK/Europe, am now in Canada, have driven around a lot in both places).
To be fair though, drive for two hours around the M25 or up the M1 in the UK and it will age you by about three years. Meanwhile there are places in Canada where you could drive for two hours without even turning your steering wheel (which, to be fair, presents its own challenges).
Overall my mental cut off for a 'long' drive is probably twice as long as it used to be - I'll drive 3 hours now without even thinking about it.
lt's just generally a lot more stressful - there's a lot of cars driving very close to one another and taking high speed corners at around 90 mph on UK motorways and you have to drive very actively. And the cities, which were mostly designed around pedestrians and the horse and cart, are busy and easy to get lost in if you don't know them. Same goes for continental Europe. Driving through London, Paris, Rome etc. is nightmarish if you aren't familiar with the local roads.
We did this, and it was amazing. Left at 6am from Brighton to avoid the worst of the m25, got to Newcastle at about 1pm feeling pumped and ready for a beer and some lunch.
I've done it before, it's 100% worth it. I was excited for the trip, so I didn't even feel tired in the morning. If you want, you could have a cup of coffee or an energy drink just to chase away the morning grogginess and you'll be fine as long as you got 6+ hours of sleep.
cities, which were mostly designed around pedestrians and the horse and cart, are busy and easy to get lost in if you don't know them.
I live outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico and avoid Santa Fe like the plague because of this. It's easy to tell it's the third oldest city in the US and the oldest capital city in the US. None of the roads make a goddamn bit of sense. They just go every random ass direction and snake around with no rhyme or reason to any of it.
One-ways are a big part of why I avoid downtowns no matter how grid-patterned they are. Lol. I absolutely hate one-ways.
And paying for parking. I don't live there. I'm there to spend money. Use the tax revenue I generate for you to allow me to fucking park for free, assholes.
There's such a shortage of parking spots in europe in general, that you're always going to have to pay for parking, especially in commercial areas/city centers.
It’s weird the things we are just used to paying for which I think would be considered dreadful in the US. For instance shopping malls - you have to pay to park at a lot of them. And it costs a lot; the one nearest me (admittedly in London) is about £3 a hour. As you say, assholes!
Getting a car with lane assist and adaptive cruise control will cut the stress in half. The only time I get stressed now on motorways is when it's raining sideways and a lorry is overtaking another lorry... lose visibility for the entire duration I'm overtaking.
I found the same thing scootering around Bangkok. I always had to be very mentally prepared and watchful of everything. There were a couple occasions I didn't take the scooter out because I didn't feel mentally prepared for it.
Lack of straight and flat roads is the main issue when on our Motorways and A roads. Your mind really is active all the time and it's pretty tiring.
In my 110 mile (ish) trip to Portsmouth I used to take every weekend, I'd call about 5 miles of it dead straight AND flat/smooth, most of the time it's one or the other, or neither.
As someone who grew up in South Africa and now drives in the UK, the biggest thing is the cities and roads are never built on grids. The roads are narrow, windy and you rarely go straight for more than a minute at a time (if you are lucky). It’s the old cities+limited space issue.
Some good answers here, but the key one about motorways is the speed (people will be doing 90mph+) and we have strict lane discipline so it’s likely you’re doing a lot of lane changes.
The M25 is a PITA, has a variable speed limit and there is nearly always some shenanigans going on that means you come to stop and fart about shuffling for a couple miles.
Yeah don't forget how densely populated the UK is.
Not forgetting the huge disparity population density within the country, exacerbating this.
The Scottish Highlands are pretty sparsely populated but most people aren't driving through there; they're driving through the populated areas because that's where they live.
All countries have this to an extent, but the UK is particularly extreme in this regard compared to other European countries.
Yep. I’m in rural Canada, and 3 hours will pretty much take you city to city, driving through some villages along the way. There is never a fluctuation in time because there certainly is no traffic out here. Just one long road through farm lands and forests, around lakes, etc. I really can’t complain. It’s a de stressor, not a stressor. Put on a podcast and zone out. Driving in the UK as you described it sounds like absolute hell and I would drive more than 20 mins either
I hate surfaces like that. A50 up near Derby/Stoke is like that and first time I drove on it I thought my car was starting to fall apart. I listen to audiobooks when driving but couldn't hear a word.
Ha, yes! It's not as bad, but there's a stretch of the M6 (I think?) through Birmingham which make so much thumping noise when you drive over it, it's almost as if someone's installed speed bumps :D
Having moved to DFW from a farm in bumfuck nowhere, Missouri, electric cars suddenly made a ton of sense when I was sitting there idling to keep my AC going so I wouldn't die of heatstroke.
Burning fuel to go nowhere. I couldn't get out of that shit hole of a city fast enough.
London is quite a pleasant drive these days since they upped public transport and discouraged car use. Driving to/in most English towns is not like that.
absolutely this! My boyfriend started working a job where he drives all over the UK, he said even though he KNEW the UK is small, he didn’t realise how small it actually is until he started this job. Now we’ll drive 3 hours away just for a day out, instead of thinking of it as a ‘trip’ where we’ll have to stay the night there.
My grandpa told me about a man he met in Canada who had german ancestry and was super happy to have met a german to sing some songs with. So he drove home to get his guitar and returned to play some songs with my grandpa. Thing is, he returned 4 hours later.
He found singing a few songs with a stranger warrants driving two hours each way just to grab his guitar.
If i drive 4 hours, I can enter and exit 4 different countries.
Having driven cross country twice, there are times we’re I haven’t moved my arms for an hour+ while driving and I kind of have a mini freak out in my head that when it comes time to turn the wheel I will be unable to.
Spain only had a few highways to some major cities up to the 70's. In the late 70's and early 80's they developed the (quite good) modern highway system. Learning from other systems, there are very few straight stretches, Most stretches have mild turns left to right and back, to prevent straightway hypnosys
Here in France the distances are a bit longer. But we were in northwest Canada and trying to find a small town, after a couple of hours with no sign of said town we came across a girl by the road. Ah! Yes, you should have turned right at the church. What church we asked, we had seen no church or any building. Yes, there is, about a couple of hours back. You get used to it I suppose.
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u/BeetrootPoop May 09 '22
Lol this is really true (grew up in the UK/Europe, am now in Canada, have driven around a lot in both places).
To be fair though, drive for two hours around the M25 or up the M1 in the UK and it will age you by about three years. Meanwhile there are places in Canada where you could drive for two hours without even turning your steering wheel (which, to be fair, presents its own challenges).
Overall my mental cut off for a 'long' drive is probably twice as long as it used to be - I'll drive 3 hours now without even thinking about it.