From what I understand, in the USA when a truck tire wears down they put a new layer of tread on it. But it doesn't seem to work very well as it eventually peels off.
Every now and then the Karens get to screeching about it and it reaches a critical mass and the NHTSA does a study and they find that most of the debris you're seeing has nothing to do with retreads. Here's the summary of a recent one:
https://www.moderntiredealer.com/industry-news/commercial-bu...
I recall I was completely flabbergasted by all the cars just ditched along the highway. There were lots of them, just off the road into the grass on the side or whatever.
I asked my buddy about it and he said it was usually tires, as it was cheaper to buy another car than get new tires... Well that didn't help my blown mind one bit.
Mind you, on the way to his house I passed a Kia dealer which literally had a huge "buy one car - get one free" sign outside...
Your rake is much less likely to fall out of a van than out of the bed of a pickup.
So if stuff can't fall out, it won't get cleaned up.
Second, this is a metal ramp used to load vehicles on a trailer (think bobcat-like).
To tow a trailer like that in Europe requires additional licenses, which comes with training around tying down EVERYTHING and double checking.
In the USA you are allowed to drive with this with the same license you need to drive a Smart Car.
In the linked video highway patrol comes out to remove the debris just a few minutes after they hit it. (highway patrol had been called out prior them hitting it)
I honestly can't recall ever feeling like I was going through a markedly different area in either better or worse directions.
Around here anything big enough to matter gets reported, the cops fling it to the side of the road and it gets picked up on a schedule because they always pick things up a few weeks before they mow (presumably because hitting garbage isn't great for the mowers).
They'd be liable if even if it was road kill, as they're responsible for ensuring big animals don't go into roads.
So also as a consequence of this: If the US were to use the same per person $ amount to upkeep their roads, US roads would have WAY more money to be maintained. Yet, the outcome is obviously worse.
Have you compared distances?
Germany is also the country with the most traffic because it's kind of at the center of everything and pays roads with income tax instead of tolls.
The French charge really high tolls and have very little traffic compared to Germany. They really don't have an excuse.
Oh but we do. Most of the state-owned motorways have been sold off to conglomerates about two decades ago, dividends and exec comps have to come from somewhere.
So still the cheapest roads to be on for foreigners.
I mean, I have seen some dangerous things. Not at the rate you describe, though. Not even close.
??
They are not..
All I heard was "taxes".
/s
On a more serious note, in the US we generally go in the direction of fewer services rather than more services. It, of course, leads to massive inefficiencies, like police removing shredded tires. But it's very difficult here, politically speaking, to get Americans to agree to add government services.
But also the dominance of car culture in the US is such that the principal state police force may actually be principally designed as a component of the highway traffic authority, as is the cass in California where the Highway Patrol was always larger than and in 1995 absorbed the State Police.
But yes there are folks whose job it is to clean that stuff up.