It's funny. As someone who has never been to the US stroads are what define the American urban landscape for me and what I want to experience. They feel really exotic. It's like being in an American movie or TV show.
US roads definitely have a cool factor to them but American stroads are awful and really not something you want to experience.
I remember taking a two hour walk in Irvine a decade ago. Walking in a straight line, palm trees in the middle of the stroad to separate the ten lanes, walking, walking... Nothing changing around me other than the names of the shops.
I didn't fully understand what made me feel so uneasy and what made the whole thing so surreal. I realized years later what i had experienced then.
It was not a good experience. I had little room to walk, almost died three times. I eventually hitchhiked and was picked up by a car, the woman who picked me up had two kids in the back and as soon as I hopped in the front seat, closed the door and said thank you, she said "and don't you try anything, I have a gun".
The whole trip left me with a horrible taste in my mouth that can only be rivaled by marmite.
In TV and films, they're not clogged with traffic, and they don't show it takes 10 minutes of driving to visit 3 shops.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3524597,-121.981251,3a,75y,2...