For all the chatter on HN, Europeans in general drive quite a lot. It's fascinating to hear people rail against cars here, and then step back out into meatspace. I just chuckle at the contrast between the dreamers on Reddit/HN and folks in the real world.
I just got back from a road trip in France and the UK and it's funny how much of the reddit-tier discourse is correct yet simultaneously so wrong. There are plenty of rural towns where everyone owns cars. There are highways, strip malls, large shopping centers with massive parking lots, and populated areas with bus service at best. The difference is the scale and the US lands embarrassingly far on one side of it. Even in the smallest rural towns in France we visited, we could hop on regional rail to the nearest large metro area.