Is it necessary for the average person to be able to instantaneously spend hundreds of pounds? I don't see why all retailers need such high security (e.g. sandwich shops).
I personally rarely spend more than 50GBP in a store. Large amounts of groceries in bulk, full fuel tank when I owned a car.
The contactless limit is 30GBP and that makes sense to me. If I cared about losing that amount of money I wouldn't go outside. I can sit on the metro and see that 25%+ of the people there are playing with smartphones worth 300GBP+.
Given all of that I don't find the US stance on security very odd. I want large payments to be verified, I don't care if someone buys a sandwich on my card, even if I never get that back from the bank.
To put it another way - huge payments should not be possible using a physical object that is used all over the place. I'd be happy for my bank to call me (2FA) for all payments above 100GBP, and for them to freeze payments if many many small payments happen in a short time span.
Otherwise, I'll see problems on my statement, cancel the card, and carry on with life.