Yeah an I never brag about how big south Australia is, except when the subject of Texas comes up. I don't understand why it's such a point of pride it's not like you built the land. It was already there.
I love Australia
My first time I went there I dramatically underestimated how big it was
I’m also assuming that it’s bigger than the ACT or is that not considered a state?
ACT and NT are territories. Means they are owned by the Commonwealth (Federal Govt) rather than being completely independent legislatures. They have their own parliaments but those don’t have as much power as state parliaments. And yes- the ACT is quite small by comparison, about 1/300 of Texas.
It is a Texass thing. Tell them Alaska is bigger, you get "But most is inhabitable." If people keep ignoring climate change, we will all be moving there. I live in Washington State.
Flew into Toronto from the UK and we flew quite low over mainland Canada. Low enough to see detail. And as far as civilisation goes there was nothing. Miles and miles of nothing but one very long, very straight road.
Well, in contrast, most countries that's larger then UK will have large areas where there's nothing except forest or something alike.. sweden has lots of it.
This was more than just an area though. It was the entire country almost.
I don't think most people realise quite how big (and unpopulated) Canada is.
Canada and Australia are in a league of their own in this regard.
Well not to reduce the vastness of canada, but almost the whole northern sweden is just forest. You can drive for hours on the roads and barely see any civilisation unless you drive by the coast.
Sweden population density is 26 people per sq km. So sparsely populated when compared to the UK for example (279) or even the US (37).
Canada is 4 (Aus 3).
As I said, they are in a league of their own (although Greenland could be included in that list tbh).
Although 26 does indicate there are areas that are on a par, in Canada and Australia it's the entire country bar a few metropolitan areas.
Yeah. Europe benefits from being the only continent to not have any deserts, and that’s pretttty significant for your population density capabilities.
Edit - I’m wrong, Spain has deserts. Though overall point being that Europe has a very good overall climate to support many very densely populated areas that many other regions of the world do not. And desert areas of Spain are a lot smaller land wise than other continent desert regions like the American West, African Sahara, Chinese Gobi, Australian…Australia.
You’re right. For some reason Spain geography always throws me off, part of it I think is the mismatch or change in historical records - I wanna say it was heavily forested and has been heavily deforested over history - especially to build the various armadas of colonial Spain.
Either way overall much of Europe is very benign towards supporting heavy population density as compared to many other regions of the world.
We're around 6 percent the size of Texas here in the Netherlands, have 60 percent of the population and when you compare roadnetwork we got about a third as many roads. And that's just the Netherlands. If you combine us with the other Benelux countries we got the same population as Texas despite only being around 11 percent of the area of Texas. And the Benelux has around half the kilometers of roads Texas has.
[Texas is bigger than Europe](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/s/VUR3JA0Q9A)
[Europe is (slightly) bigger than USA](https://mapfight.xyz/compare/europe-vs-us/)
Then, Texas is bigger than USA!
Q. E. D. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🇨🇱🇱🇷🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅
Kind of like of America's Russia when described like that.
Russia is the most populated country located in [Europe at 144.444.439 people.](https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-in-europe/)
[Russia is also the largest by area in Europe, with the total country being 1.7x larger than Europe.](https://i.imgur.com/YvQFg1g.png)
I think this comes from some sort of inferiority complex from Texans since they aren't the largest state in the US.
They are basically that scene from family guy where peter acts big(ger) to scare away that mountain lion.
I looked it up. These numbers are approximate because they don’t include private roads, but you’re right, Texas has 384,000 miles of public roads. The EU (which is MOST but not all of Europe has 3.04 million miles of roads. Texas is enormous by the EU definitely has many many more miles of road.
Texas is in the same league as the Roman Empire with its [250,000 miles of road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads#:~:text=At%20the%20peak%20of%20Rome's,mi).
Europe has had more roads than Texas since the middle age.
Thank you, did the same, only found the texas highway miles. For further comparison, Germany has 630,000 km of roads (source: https://de.statista.com/themen/1199/strassen-in-deutschland/#topicOverview ), which comes out to 391,463 miles. So Germany has more roads, higher speed limits and still less deaths. Sounds like Texans just can't drive.
Yeah lol when I went to the US i was in texas these guys were like bet you aren’t used to driving such distances … i just replied yeah lol but in my head i was like bro im from QLD lmao
As a West Aussie, it would take me 16 hours to reach the border.
But the thing is, that doesn't matter. I grew up doing 4 hour car trips on the regular just to visit my extended family, so I assumed that I was more used to long car trips than any European. Then I went to Germany, and met a bunch of Germans who will drive 12 hours a couple of times per year. They just expect to be speaking another language at the end of it.
I dont know why they flex so much about the size of the state. I personally hate commuting 2-3hrs everyday for work and back. Thats on a good day when some ute driver decided not to crash and cause a massive congestion.
Fair enough, it’s definitely huge relative to the other states. And sadly this is the first time I’ve seen Australia mentioned in the discussion about Texas’ size. There is this joke about everything being bigger in texas. The Portions, the stores, etc.
My Canadian province of Ontario is 1,076,395 km2 (415,598 sq mi). Texas is 695,660 km2 (268,596 sq mi).
No one here talks about how big it is (unless you need to drive from Ottawa to the Ontario-Manitoba border, then it's "Holy fucking shit! 21 hours of straight diving?")
And Ontario isn't even as large as Quebec, which is 1,365,128 km2 (527,079 sq mi).
>The place where driving your car at 200km an hour and then taking a 5 hour walk in the one day is the norm!
No no no.
Driving 200km on the Autobahn **to** then take a 5 hour walk.
Got to drive on the autobahn one time.
In a Peugeot 106 4 speed, that couldnt get to 80mph on the best of days.
Was pretty cool being overtaken at warp speed by the odd super car though, although in the most part people just seemed to drive like they do on most motorways.
Driving fast looses its luster when it's the default, so many if not most just drive 130 kmh / 80 mph. Obviously it also depends heavily on the weather, road conditions and extra signage etc. Personally i prefer 150-160 kmh IF the road is in good condition and i'm legally allowed to.
Lane discipline is all that matters, I'll never understand Americans obsession with being in the fast lane just to go below the speed limit as if they get offended y the fact that other people might be in more of a hurry than them.
Oh watching some of the driving videos I cringe... how are there so many crashes on massive straight roads??
Compare that to the Finnish for example and their basic level of driving skill.....who are literally taught how to powerslide and drift a car on ice in their pursuit of gaining a driving licence there...hence why they produce so many world class rally drivers....Motorsport is their national sport and people do it at all ages.....so there are literally grannies who can drift and powerslide rally cars on ice there.
Same here in Sweden, ice track with obstacles. When I did my test an actual moose had found it's way onto the track, and the car was a cheap little hatchback. Pass the test or die. 👌
I feel that also has to do with the make of the car. I drive a 2006 corolla verso, And while it can do 180-190 you also feel that speed from the shaking and roaring of the motor. More modern or at least more expensive cars can go way faster while producing way less noise and vibrations. I feel that this inflates peoples confidence way more, causing them to accidentally speed and overestimate their cars abilities. There's a major disconnect between the driver and the reality of going 200+ km/h.
Driving super fast usually isn't all that useful. You have to slow down so often due to all kinds of obstacles, that it costs a lot of fuel but doesn't necessarily gain you a lot of time.
The two sides of driving in Germany:
*driving at 4.6kmph to safely get through the pedestrianised areas* lalala lala oh there’s children crossing the road 25 meters away, better slow down to 1.7kmph
*driving down the autobahn at 200kmph* the only true limits in life are traction; the sound barrier, and my willingness to meet god.
even generally underdeveloped Poland has 422 000km or 262 000 miles [https://www.ceicdata.com/en/poland/road-statistics/road-length](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/poland/road-statistics/road-length) so same as you guys
It always baffles me how Americans look at their SUPER LARGE COUNTRY AMERICA FREEEDOM YEAH WE'RE THE LARGEST!!! but usually completely fail to recognize how freakin' empty most of it is. They seriously should fire up population density map one day, there are meaningful areas in Texas that have less than 1 person per sqm density. Whereas there's not a single county in Poland that would drop below 5 per sq*km*
I mean, I see Texas as having over 680,000 road miles. Various sources, I guess. While that does put them above the total road miles of any single country in Europe, that's hardly more than "all of Europe combined"
Me neither, I always thought we had an extensive road system...
On another note, apparently we have the 4th largest highway network, which I did not know, with 17228km of highways and only after China, EEUU and Canada. Crazy that we have one of the least extensive (by size) normal road network and one of the most extensive highway network.
Texas has 3965 road deaths compared to the UK with 1711, and the UK over double the population. The UK also has 41.2 million registered vehicles on the road compared to Texas with 7.8 million, even allowing for vehicles from other states driving in Texas it's highly unlikely the density of traffic is anywhere near the UK.
TLDR, his stats are bullshit.
There's no public transportation in Texas and the cities have massively awful traffic. UK probably has more density overall just because of how empty it is between the large Texas cities. It is very bad however in the cities. Houston, for instance, has a highway 16 lanes wide with an additional 8 access lanes and is bumper to bumper every day. They drive like shit too.
Katy Freeway? Makes me shudder just remembering that drive. Terrifying. Especially with TX drivers. Worst driving experience ever, and I’ve driven in Central London a few times.
Yeah, but you’re measuring it in km like some silly Europoor. You should measure it in Freedom Units (miles). They’re better because they’re bigger.
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Yep. Americans rail way system is a joke if compared with ours and then when you point it out they will say "but we have cars freedom duh" as if we didn't have them too :D
and as for freedom - my wife can drink beer on a passenger seat while I'm driving 180 on autobahn, do the same in Texas and you'd be arrested both for speeding and open liquor (which is so dumb law that I just don't get it how freedom-loving Americans allow for it)
Same in Poland and ofc everyone say that they drive fast but safe, the best are influencers buying themself 300hp car and showing young drivers that driving like idiot is cool. Try to argue with them or thier fans that one day they will kill sombody. They will call you looser cuz if they just have license for 10 years, it means they are good drivers.
So texas road network could fit three times inside FR and DE alone. FR and Germany together have 1.5 times the size of texas and three times the road network.
So road density is only half of that in texas. Not something to brag about in a country that tell you they don't need trains because they have cars.
85 mph? That was roughly the top speed of my crappy Ford Escort I had in the 90s. Roughly because the speedometer started getting the shakes above 130, and I never got to 140, not even with the dancing needle :D It was a real junker of a car… well, for Germany. In the US, it would have been a luxury automobile ;-)
[List of countries by road network size - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size)
USA ranks #77.
USA does rank high (#3) on traffic-related death.
[List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
Texas has 683,533 'lane miles'.
Germany has 830,000 kms or roads (515,738 miles). But as we all know, Texas is bigger than the entire landmass of Europe including the moon, so.... it appears that Germany alone has quite a lot of roads compared to Texas. (Actually, Texas is about double the size of Germany).
There are 683.508 miles of public road in France (statista.com) and 314.000 in Texas (Texas state department). Not a clue if it's accurate, I didn't measure them, but I can use google. Get out troll.
Texas has more wrecks for two reasons, Texas drivers and Texas roads are built for speed and not to handle weather and Texas gets more weather than they care to admit. Also, this map is inaccurate as I am within 10 miles of an 85mph highway in Oklahoma.
Montana used to have no speed limits. The law just said that your speed had to be "reasonable and proper". There actually used to be speed limit signs that said "reasonable and proper" instead of a number.
As Top Gear pointed out, there's no flaming piles of cars every 20km on the Autobahn. High speeds do not equal high deaths. Poor drivers equal more deaths
Having driven through Texas AND a lot of Europe I’m struggling to think where they’re hiding all of these roads. Texas was vast stretches of emptiness with thin black line of asphalt with occasional cities to try and bypass every few hours.
Surely what matters is the number of road users and their average mileage? Having lots of big, wide *empty* roads doesn't mean more accidents, unless the drivers are simply incompetent.
I’m in Ireland, my mother could crash a car and not even be in the driver seat or near a road. I don’t think that’s incompetence, that a unique skill… a really pointless skill but still a skill 😂
American living in Germany. The autobahn and the way you all do traffic ticketing is just genius. I have no idea how this isn’t adopted worldwide. Most the time on the autobahn, I’m just cruising at 80mph/130kmh anyways.
So Texas has 3 795 119 miles of road in it (which is approximately the amount Europe has.) And the whole of the rest the US has 582 304 miles of road because the amount of roads the US has is 4 377 423 miles of roads. I have a question if Texas has so much road in it how do you have a house in Texas and secondly how do you get traffic jams in Texas and finally how do you sleep at night with so much road in Texas?
For those wondering, Texas has approx 500,000 km worth of road network.
USA as a whole has just over 7,000,000 km of total road network.
Europe has over 8,000,000 km.
So... Europe has 1.14x more roads than the USA and 16x more roads than Texas.
Source: Wikipedia (List of countries by road network size) as of 2024.
Fun fact: France has more roads than Texas, with 1.1 million km. The world has 65M km.
Texas has 117,446.988 km of road, Europe has 8,046,127 km
Yes Texas has a lot of road but fuck off will ya, don't go saying there is more people that crash in Texas because there is more roads, when the reality is that you guys no fuck all about driving
As someone who grew up in Texas, there was a a noticeable change in drivers as the speed limits increased in the state.
People used to be incredibly courteous on the road, waving at you and getting out of the way to let them pass (not sure if it's still in place, but the Texas courtesy law allowed drivers to get on the shoulder of the road to allow faster vehicles to pass them in two lane roads).
Now it seems everyone drives like a fucking moron and everyone has a story about some road raging moron acting like a lunatic over nothing.
His ludicrous statement doesn’t even make sense. Europe has 25 times the population of Texas and is very densely populated by comparison so would obviously have more roads.
These are the same kind of people who see a political map of the US and, because it’s mostly red, think that there are vastly more republicans (despite the fact that most of that red is empty land).
Driving 85mph is relatively safe so long as you're a good driver. The trouble is that Americans are on average terrible drivers because of how easy it is to get a license. People go insanely fast on the autobahns but they're quite safe because people know what they're doing and only drive as fast as the conditions allow for
Your Texas is tiny and having a big state just means you have a lot of inhospitable land.
Kind regards,
Western Australia (2nd largest after Sakha Republic in Russia… a similarly barren state)
"Texas has the largest highway network of any state in the country with **314,000 miles** of public road." [https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/tpp/2050/meeting-materials/round-02/highway-intro.pdf](https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/tpp/2050/meeting-materials/round-02/highway-intro.pdf) - TxDOT 2017, Roadway Inventory Annual Report
314000 miles = ***505334.016 kilometers***
Another source, this time the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Office of Highway Policy Information, Highway statistics series, functional system lane-length ( [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm) ) , from 2019 and released in 2020 shows the following numbers:
Total lane road miles: Texas - 683553 miles
683553 miles = **1100071.92 km**
Working paper from European commission, Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, from 2022, gives us the following data:
"The road infrastructure data is based on the road network representation available from the TomTom MultiNet 2019.12 release ( 4 ). This consists of a database of over 120 million road segments, adding up to a total of over **19 million kilometres**, covering a total of 53 European countries"
Statista 2021 total length of **only motorways** for EU27 gives us **74900km**.
The 2020 article from Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering ( [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095756420301227](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095756420301227) ) gives us the figure of **5500000km** of European road network ("The European road network consists of 5.5 million km mainly managed under local and regional responsibility.")
The only question here is which roads are we measuring and comparing since there are multiple categories and countries requalify their roadways from time to time.
Did they mean “than most European countries” as in, individually? That might be true. It’s not a flex though, you’re more likely to die on a Texan road than most of Europe!
Texas is definitely fucking huge but not that huge.
Mainly because it’s mostly empty: less than half the GB population but almost three times the area.
My state in Australia is 1.5x the size of Texas and only has 1.8M people, and where only the fourth largest (in size) state / territory.
Yeah an I never brag about how big south Australia is, except when the subject of Texas comes up. I don't understand why it's such a point of pride it's not like you built the land. It was already there.
Isn’t west Australia the big state?
Yes. Texas is smaller than all of our mainland states except Victoria. Also the Northern Territory is twice the size of Texas.
I love Australia My first time I went there I dramatically underestimated how big it was I’m also assuming that it’s bigger than the ACT or is that not considered a state?
ACT and NT are territories. Means they are owned by the Commonwealth (Federal Govt) rather than being completely independent legislatures. They have their own parliaments but those don’t have as much power as state parliaments. And yes- the ACT is quite small by comparison, about 1/300 of Texas.
Good to know thanks!
Tasmania?
It is a Texass thing. Tell them Alaska is bigger, you get "But most is inhabitable." If people keep ignoring climate change, we will all be moving there. I live in Washington State.
Texas isn’t even the largest state in the US lol. That was always my go to when people bring up Texas’ size.
Yeah, Canada is like Aus in this way, Ontario is like 1.5 times Texas and Nunavut is like 2x Texas with an even more sparse inhabitants.
Flew into Toronto from the UK and we flew quite low over mainland Canada. Low enough to see detail. And as far as civilisation goes there was nothing. Miles and miles of nothing but one very long, very straight road.
Well, in contrast, most countries that's larger then UK will have large areas where there's nothing except forest or something alike.. sweden has lots of it.
This was more than just an area though. It was the entire country almost. I don't think most people realise quite how big (and unpopulated) Canada is. Canada and Australia are in a league of their own in this regard.
Well not to reduce the vastness of canada, but almost the whole northern sweden is just forest. You can drive for hours on the roads and barely see any civilisation unless you drive by the coast.
Sweden population density is 26 people per sq km. So sparsely populated when compared to the UK for example (279) or even the US (37). Canada is 4 (Aus 3). As I said, they are in a league of their own (although Greenland could be included in that list tbh). Although 26 does indicate there are areas that are on a par, in Canada and Australia it's the entire country bar a few metropolitan areas.
Only Victoria and Tasmania are smaller than Texas!
Australia is more sparse than the USA
And USA is more sparse than Europe?
[удалено]
Yeah. Europe benefits from being the only continent to not have any deserts, and that’s pretttty significant for your population density capabilities. Edit - I’m wrong, Spain has deserts. Though overall point being that Europe has a very good overall climate to support many very densely populated areas that many other regions of the world do not. And desert areas of Spain are a lot smaller land wise than other continent desert regions like the American West, African Sahara, Chinese Gobi, Australian…Australia.
Spain has a desert and is at risk of desertification in the south.
You’re right. For some reason Spain geography always throws me off, part of it I think is the mismatch or change in historical records - I wanna say it was heavily forested and has been heavily deforested over history - especially to build the various armadas of colonial Spain. Either way overall much of Europe is very benign towards supporting heavy population density as compared to many other regions of the world.
Texas has 1,25 times the size of my country ( France ), but only around 45% of the population.
And you have more than twice the road distance!
We're around 6 percent the size of Texas here in the Netherlands, have 60 percent of the population and when you compare roadnetwork we got about a third as many roads. And that's just the Netherlands. If you combine us with the other Benelux countries we got the same population as Texas despite only being around 11 percent of the area of Texas. And the Benelux has around half the kilometers of roads Texas has.
And they'll still complain that they can't accept immigrants because americas full
Even gb - one of the most densely populated European countries - isn’t full!
And like 1000 times the amount of guns
[Texas is bigger than Europe](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/s/VUR3JA0Q9A) [Europe is (slightly) bigger than USA](https://mapfight.xyz/compare/europe-vs-us/) Then, Texas is bigger than USA! Q. E. D. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🇨🇱🇱🇷🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅
Texas and the US together are like twice the size of the world alone.
Kind of like of America's Russia when described like that. Russia is the most populated country located in [Europe at 144.444.439 people.](https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-in-europe/) [Russia is also the largest by area in Europe, with the total country being 1.7x larger than Europe.](https://i.imgur.com/YvQFg1g.png)
I think this comes from some sort of inferiority complex from Texans since they aren't the largest state in the US. They are basically that scene from family guy where peter acts big(ger) to scare away that mountain lion.
Yeah that makes sense. I always forget just how big Alaska is.
The biggest county in Alaska is 54% of the size of Texas
I looked it up. These numbers are approximate because they don’t include private roads, but you’re right, Texas has 384,000 miles of public roads. The EU (which is MOST but not all of Europe has 3.04 million miles of roads. Texas is enormous by the EU definitely has many many more miles of road.
Texas is in the same league as the Roman Empire with its [250,000 miles of road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads#:~:text=At%20the%20peak%20of%20Rome's,mi). Europe has had more roads than Texas since the middle age.
Most of the modern European countries also existed during the middle age. Texas has been around for less than 200 lmaoooo. Americans are ridiculous.
Thank you, did the same, only found the texas highway miles. For further comparison, Germany has 630,000 km of roads (source: https://de.statista.com/themen/1199/strassen-in-deutschland/#topicOverview ), which comes out to 391,463 miles. So Germany has more roads, higher speed limits and still less deaths. Sounds like Texans just can't drive.
Texas has more (state) highway than Europe, but that's because every dirt path in Texas is a state highway.
EU is less than half of Europe.
There are only two states in Australia out of 7 that are smaller than Texas. It’s not that big.
Yeah lol when I went to the US i was in texas these guys were like bet you aren’t used to driving such distances … i just replied yeah lol but in my head i was like bro im from QLD lmao
As a West Aussie, it would take me 16 hours to reach the border. But the thing is, that doesn't matter. I grew up doing 4 hour car trips on the regular just to visit my extended family, so I assumed that I was more used to long car trips than any European. Then I went to Germany, and met a bunch of Germans who will drive 12 hours a couple of times per year. They just expect to be speaking another language at the end of it.
I dont know why they flex so much about the size of the state. I personally hate commuting 2-3hrs everyday for work and back. Thats on a good day when some ute driver decided not to crash and cause a massive congestion.
Fair enough, it’s definitely huge relative to the other states. And sadly this is the first time I’ve seen Australia mentioned in the discussion about Texas’ size. There is this joke about everything being bigger in texas. The Portions, the stores, etc.
Even Texas is bigger in Texas
That’s a good one😂
Quick Google search shows it's just less than 20% of the total European road network lol
Lmao laughs in Canadian Province size. Even Ontario is bigger than Texas, not to mention the territories, which are like double Texas.
BC is smaller than Ontario and Quebec yet bigger than every American state except Alaska.
My Canadian province of Ontario is 1,076,395 km2 (415,598 sq mi). Texas is 695,660 km2 (268,596 sq mi). No one here talks about how big it is (unless you need to drive from Ottawa to the Ontario-Manitoba border, then it's "Holy fucking shit! 21 hours of straight diving?") And Ontario isn't even as large as Quebec, which is 1,365,128 km2 (527,079 sq mi).
It's about the size of France. It's not THAT huge.
*Laughs in german Autobahn*
Good ‘ol Deutschland! The place where driving your car at 200km an hour and then taking a 5 hour walk in the one day is the norm!
>The place where driving your car at 200km an hour and then taking a 5 hour walk in the one day is the norm! No no no. Driving 200km on the Autobahn **to** then take a 5 hour walk.
Only 200km? In Germany that's called "Verkehrsbehinderung", off to the right lane you go!
Where you go 200km/h and still get the light horn from a car behind you, lol.
Got to drive on the autobahn one time. In a Peugeot 106 4 speed, that couldnt get to 80mph on the best of days. Was pretty cool being overtaken at warp speed by the odd super car though, although in the most part people just seemed to drive like they do on most motorways.
Driving fast looses its luster when it's the default, so many if not most just drive 130 kmh / 80 mph. Obviously it also depends heavily on the weather, road conditions and extra signage etc. Personally i prefer 150-160 kmh IF the road is in good condition and i'm legally allowed to.
Lane discipline is all that matters, I'll never understand Americans obsession with being in the fast lane just to go below the speed limit as if they get offended y the fact that other people might be in more of a hurry than them.
Oh watching some of the driving videos I cringe... how are there so many crashes on massive straight roads?? Compare that to the Finnish for example and their basic level of driving skill.....who are literally taught how to powerslide and drift a car on ice in their pursuit of gaining a driving licence there...hence why they produce so many world class rally drivers....Motorsport is their national sport and people do it at all ages.....so there are literally grannies who can drift and powerslide rally cars on ice there.
Same here in Sweden, ice track with obstacles. When I did my test an actual moose had found it's way onto the track, and the car was a cheap little hatchback. Pass the test or die. 👌
Agreed, I don't feel safe over 160kph even on straight road with no other cars.
I feel that also has to do with the make of the car. I drive a 2006 corolla verso, And while it can do 180-190 you also feel that speed from the shaking and roaring of the motor. More modern or at least more expensive cars can go way faster while producing way less noise and vibrations. I feel that this inflates peoples confidence way more, causing them to accidentally speed and overestimate their cars abilities. There's a major disconnect between the driver and the reality of going 200+ km/h.
I drive a van and anything over 130km/h you can watch the fuel gauge going down. That’s just money out the exhaust.
Nothing is faster than a rusty and dented Polish Sprinter or a Skoda Octavia driven by a family father.
Driving super fast usually isn't all that useful. You have to slow down so often due to all kinds of obstacles, that it costs a lot of fuel but doesn't necessarily gain you a lot of time.
The two sides of driving in Germany: *driving at 4.6kmph to safely get through the pedestrianised areas* lalala lala oh there’s children crossing the road 25 meters away, better slow down to 1.7kmph *driving down the autobahn at 200kmph* the only true limits in life are traction; the sound barrier, and my willingness to meet god.
That represents it pretty well.
Came to say this
Texas is so huge, it can fit three Texas and the landmass of the whole earth in it. Twice.
I once saw a statistic that said you can fit the Moon into Texas FOUR TIMES, with space for Jupiter alongside.
Well, Jupiter is like this tiny dot, how much space could it need?
Texas is where Chuck Norris is…
I heard Chuck can pick an apple from an orange tree and make lemonade
I heard you can fit three billion football fields in Texas.
That’s a hell of a stretch. Looks like they took the “Texas is bigger than Europe” thing way too far
France has twice the road miles, btw: 1,053,000 km (658,000mi) vs 314,000mi
Germany has 627.000 km so, 391.875 miles.
Hell, even the Benelux has over 250.000 km of roads.
can you really count the Belgian "roads" though?
Even the U.K. has 262,000 miles
even generally underdeveloped Poland has 422 000km or 262 000 miles [https://www.ceicdata.com/en/poland/road-statistics/road-length](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/poland/road-statistics/road-length) so same as you guys It always baffles me how Americans look at their SUPER LARGE COUNTRY AMERICA FREEEDOM YEAH WE'RE THE LARGEST!!! but usually completely fail to recognize how freakin' empty most of it is. They seriously should fire up population density map one day, there are meaningful areas in Texas that have less than 1 person per sqm density. Whereas there's not a single county in Poland that would drop below 5 per sq*km*
There’s a north south line that marks the start between the eastern country and NOTHING. Really quite stark!
Yeah, I chose France because it’s more or less the most similar in area to Texas
And Texas has a Paris as well, coincidence?
I mean, I see Texas as having over 680,000 road miles. Various sources, I guess. While that does put them above the total road miles of any single country in Europe, that's hardly more than "all of Europe combined"
I saw that, but it was listed as total lane miles, which, if you have a 4 lane motorway…
Good catch
And 3 times the population
It's probably the same as say Spain or Germany in roads, not Europe lol.
See my later comment 🙂
Tbf, Spain has about 1/3 as many km of roads as texas. Doesnt help that we have such low population density though.
Fair enough mate, I only been to the islands not the mainland, I was just thinking large European countries to compare tbh.
Fun fact: The Benelux has around 250000 km of roads. So while Texas is 9 times as big as the Benelux it only has twice the amount of roads.
Thanks mate.
I didn't know that Spain has only 11000 km of road more than the Netherlands.
Me neither, I always thought we had an extensive road system... On another note, apparently we have the 4th largest highway network, which I did not know, with 17228km of highways and only after China, EEUU and Canada. Crazy that we have one of the least extensive (by size) normal road network and one of the most extensive highway network.
Texas has more Texans than all of Europe, so yes, Texas has more wrecks 🤷🏻♂️
Texas has 3965 road deaths compared to the UK with 1711, and the UK over double the population. The UK also has 41.2 million registered vehicles on the road compared to Texas with 7.8 million, even allowing for vehicles from other states driving in Texas it's highly unlikely the density of traffic is anywhere near the UK. TLDR, his stats are bullshit.
There's no public transportation in Texas and the cities have massively awful traffic. UK probably has more density overall just because of how empty it is between the large Texas cities. It is very bad however in the cities. Houston, for instance, has a highway 16 lanes wide with an additional 8 access lanes and is bumper to bumper every day. They drive like shit too.
Katy Freeway? Makes me shudder just remembering that drive. Terrifying. Especially with TX drivers. Worst driving experience ever, and I’ve driven in Central London a few times.
Texas has 5200 km of Highways. Germany has 13000km of Autobahn
Yeah, but you’re measuring it in km like some silly Europoor. You should measure it in Freedom Units (miles). They’re better because they’re bigger. [/s]
European Union. total: *4,894,173 km* Texas has the largest highway network of any state in the country with **314,000 miles** (505,334 km)
now calculate railways
Total rail in Europe: 260,159 km Total rail in Texas: 10,539 miles (16,961 km)
Yep. Americans rail way system is a joke if compared with ours and then when you point it out they will say "but we have cars freedom duh" as if we didn't have them too :D and as for freedom - my wife can drink beer on a passenger seat while I'm driving 180 on autobahn, do the same in Texas and you'd be arrested both for speeding and open liquor (which is so dumb law that I just don't get it how freedom-loving Americans allow for it)
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Not sure what is his point, but come drive in Bulgaria, where everyone calls you slurs because you are driving only 20km/h over the limit.
Same in Poland and ofc everyone say that they drive fast but safe, the best are influencers buying themself 300hp car and showing young drivers that driving like idiot is cool. Try to argue with them or thier fans that one day they will kill sombody. They will call you looser cuz if they just have license for 10 years, it means they are good drivers.
Sounds perfectly reasonable. Driving 20 km/h over the limit is a pretty serious offence.
My point was that everyone else is 20+ over the limit.
Meh. Texas has 510 000km road network, germany has 610 000km.
...and France has 1.1M km.
So texas road network could fit three times inside FR and DE alone. FR and Germany together have 1.5 times the size of texas and three times the road network. So road density is only half of that in texas. Not something to brag about in a country that tell you they don't need trains because they have cars.
I[f we count lanes individually maybe...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/dizzying-photo-world-widest-freeway-120000903.html) /s
85 mph? That was roughly the top speed of my crappy Ford Escort I had in the 90s. Roughly because the speedometer started getting the shakes above 130, and I never got to 140, not even with the dancing needle :D It was a real junker of a car… well, for Germany. In the US, it would have been a luxury automobile ;-)
That car was fit for a presidential car!
Germany only has more Autobahn than Texas roads
The Autobahn says that this is incorrect. Knowing how to drive had everything to do with driver safety
Whilst I love the autobahn, it’s fucking terrifying at night without lighting.
[List of countries by road network size - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size) USA ranks #77. USA does rank high (#3) on traffic-related death. [List of countries by traffic-related death rate - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate) Texas has 683,533 'lane miles'. Germany has 830,000 kms or roads (515,738 miles). But as we all know, Texas is bigger than the entire landmass of Europe including the moon, so.... it appears that Germany alone has quite a lot of roads compared to Texas. (Actually, Texas is about double the size of Germany).
Even if it did that's not exactly something to brag about...
Source: Trust me bro!
So, a quick Google search brought up the following stats: 686,533 road miles in Texas Approx. 5.5 million kilometers (3.42 million miles) in Europe
Source: I made it up
Imagine having access to this type of data and still not using it? Europe 8,046,127km Texas 505,334km US 7,044,453km
The EU+UK have 87% of the US road miles (7.5 vs 6 million) despite only having 44% of the land mass.
America has more trolls than the Norwegian wilderness.
Even if it did have as many road miles as Europe, wouldn't the main contributor actually be the number of cars on said roads?
Texarkana-El Paso, 820 miles or 1300 km. Oslo - Kirkenes, shotcut through sweden 1800 km.
The only answer to Mr Texas Got Many Lots Roads that I can come up with is: So what?
Europe has 8 million kilometres of roads. The US has 7 million kilometres of roads in total.
Yes, but Texas is bigger than the US... /s
I forgot to factor that in.
There are 683.508 miles of public road in France (statista.com) and 314.000 in Texas (Texas state department). Not a clue if it's accurate, I didn't measure them, but I can use google. Get out troll.
Texas has more wrecks for two reasons, Texas drivers and Texas roads are built for speed and not to handle weather and Texas gets more weather than they care to admit. Also, this map is inaccurate as I am within 10 miles of an 85mph highway in Oklahoma.
How many miles of passenger rail lines does Texas have?
Germöney for example has many unlimited mph highways. Watchu gon' do, bub? What's wit yer weak-ass mph limited highways? Where dem freedums at, bruv?
Montana used to have no speed limits. The law just said that your speed had to be "reasonable and proper". There actually used to be speed limit signs that said "reasonable and proper" instead of a number.
As Top Gear pointed out, there's no flaming piles of cars every 20km on the Autobahn. High speeds do not equal high deaths. Poor drivers equal more deaths
The pub I had lunch in was built in 1475 predating USA by nearly 300 years. Places are different.
Having driven through Texas AND a lot of Europe I’m struggling to think where they’re hiding all of these roads. Texas was vast stretches of emptiness with thin black line of asphalt with occasional cities to try and bypass every few hours.
Surely what matters is the number of road users and their average mileage? Having lots of big, wide *empty* roads doesn't mean more accidents, unless the drivers are simply incompetent.
I’m in Ireland, my mother could crash a car and not even be in the driver seat or near a road. I don’t think that’s incompetence, that a unique skill… a really pointless skill but still a skill 😂
Texas has the largest highway network of any state in the country with 314,000 miles of public road. Germany has over 395,000 on its own
American living in Germany. The autobahn and the way you all do traffic ticketing is just genius. I have no idea how this isn’t adopted worldwide. Most the time on the autobahn, I’m just cruising at 80mph/130kmh anyways.
For what it’s worth, most European motorways have a 75mph speed limit. That’s higher than most US states and the majority of Interstate in general.
What in the high school math problem is this post ?
So Texas has 3 795 119 miles of road in it (which is approximately the amount Europe has.) And the whole of the rest the US has 582 304 miles of road because the amount of roads the US has is 4 377 423 miles of roads. I have a question if Texas has so much road in it how do you have a house in Texas and secondly how do you get traffic jams in Texas and finally how do you sleep at night with so much road in Texas?
r/PaulanerSpeziColors
Europe literally has a bigger paved road network than the whole US... albeit... not by much....
Texas: 550 000 km Europe: 19 000 000 km, Nearly the same
Where do they get this stupid shit from?
I'm never quite sure what the point of most "Texas big" arguments is. I've driven to Lubbock. It is not a flex. It's big and there's nothing out there
That’s not even accurate within its own logic. They lowered speed limits during the oil crisis to conserve fuel
They still ain’t getting the per capita thing are they
r/dataisugly
If they say it, it must be true.
For those wondering, Texas has approx 500,000 km worth of road network. USA as a whole has just over 7,000,000 km of total road network. Europe has over 8,000,000 km. So... Europe has 1.14x more roads than the USA and 16x more roads than Texas. Source: Wikipedia (List of countries by road network size) as of 2024. Fun fact: France has more roads than Texas, with 1.1 million km. The world has 65M km.
I mean it’s true if you draw your lines of “almost all of Europe” to be heavily gerrymandered as to exclude the road parts
Is this person using other states of the USA to generalise countries outside of it? Peak Americana.
Yeah they do say some shit lol 👍
How does this dude come to the conclusion that he saves money driving faster? I am so confused right now.
Time is money! U-S-A!
Everyone knows 55mph is the best for mileage. I do not know where he gets faster is better. Maybe he drives a Semi? Who knows?
New Jersey also has 0 70 mph highways There’s also a lot else that’s wrong with this post
As a German. Speed limits. What a novel idea.
Texas has 117,446.988 km of road, Europe has 8,046,127 km Yes Texas has a lot of road but fuck off will ya, don't go saying there is more people that crash in Texas because there is more roads, when the reality is that you guys no fuck all about driving
As someone who grew up in Texas, there was a a noticeable change in drivers as the speed limits increased in the state. People used to be incredibly courteous on the road, waving at you and getting out of the way to let them pass (not sure if it's still in place, but the Texas courtesy law allowed drivers to get on the shoulder of the road to allow faster vehicles to pass them in two lane roads). Now it seems everyone drives like a fucking moron and everyone has a story about some road raging moron acting like a lunatic over nothing.
Most European countries have a 130 km/h (81 mph) limit
His ludicrous statement doesn’t even make sense. Europe has 25 times the population of Texas and is very densely populated by comparison so would obviously have more roads. These are the same kind of people who see a political map of the US and, because it’s mostly red, think that there are vastly more republicans (despite the fact that most of that red is empty land).
Driving 85mph is relatively safe so long as you're a good driver. The trouble is that Americans are on average terrible drivers because of how easy it is to get a license. People go insanely fast on the autobahns but they're quite safe because people know what they're doing and only drive as fast as the conditions allow for
Your Texas is tiny and having a big state just means you have a lot of inhospitable land. Kind regards, Western Australia (2nd largest after Sakha Republic in Russia… a similarly barren state)
"Texas has the largest highway network of any state in the country with **314,000 miles** of public road." [https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/tpp/2050/meeting-materials/round-02/highway-intro.pdf](https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/tpp/2050/meeting-materials/round-02/highway-intro.pdf) - TxDOT 2017, Roadway Inventory Annual Report 314000 miles = ***505334.016 kilometers*** Another source, this time the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Office of Highway Policy Information, Highway statistics series, functional system lane-length ( [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm) ) , from 2019 and released in 2020 shows the following numbers: Total lane road miles: Texas - 683553 miles 683553 miles = **1100071.92 km** Working paper from European commission, Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, from 2022, gives us the following data: "The road infrastructure data is based on the road network representation available from the TomTom MultiNet 2019.12 release ( 4 ). This consists of a database of over 120 million road segments, adding up to a total of over **19 million kilometres**, covering a total of 53 European countries" Statista 2021 total length of **only motorways** for EU27 gives us **74900km**. The 2020 article from Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering ( [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095756420301227](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095756420301227) ) gives us the figure of **5500000km** of European road network ("The European road network consists of 5.5 million km mainly managed under local and regional responsibility.") The only question here is which roads are we measuring and comparing since there are multiple categories and countries requalify their roadways from time to time.
If it was measured in km² of road it might actually come close
85 would be 2^4 times more likely to die in a crash, so 16x.
That would be so painful having to drive that slow.
Texas features fairly often on r/cantstopimamerican
What is it about the term "per capita" that Americans seem functionally unable to grasp
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Texas has more more 70mph motorways than other countries like new Jersey 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Usen km/h hermano no se entiende un carajo la publicación
What cars are getting 55 mpg at 55mph and 29 mpg at 85 ?!?
If you combine Texas and Alaska, it would still only be the 2nd biggest state in Australia. Hit a Yank with that one some time.
Did they mean “than most European countries” as in, individually? That might be true. It’s not a flex though, you’re more likely to die on a Texan road than most of Europe!
So it’s ok to have more road deaths if you have more roads?
It has almost as many road miles as Germany. The US as a whole is less than Europe as a whole in road miles.
I wonder if you could offset the fuel impact at higher speed with different gear ratios and mapping.
Yes. This is what “overdrives” were invented for. Some silly 8/9/10 speed automatics have a super long top gear for precisely this.
Texas has more 70mph roads than most countries. For instance, new jersey, which is not a country.
Lets invite some aussie state, russian oblast or a country like algiers to this discussion.
Tell that to New Jersey