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You have to have coordination, you can't go shopping and bring back a lot of packages with you, in the winter you don't want to ride around in the cold, snow or ice, in the summer the heat sucks, the rain sucks too. It's dangerous to share the road with drivers in most areas.
-Climate is a problem for 2/3 of the country.
-US roads blow.*
-American driving culture strongly favours land-yachts - we're not used to bicycles/motorbikes/scooters.
*The US could have better roads...if gas taxes were higher. Here in NZ, the roads are beautiful, be it the main highway (State Highway 1 Auckland-Wellington) or my little suburb. Of course, gas is the equivalent of US$5.40/gallon. At its lowest when oil hit its nadir around Christmas, it was $5.13/gallon. I recognise that these prices might start the American Revolution 2.0.
1: Winter, when it can be snow and ice on the roadway any day for 8 months a year. Not every day, but enough you don't ride a scooter. They would not stay on the road on ice.
2: In the summer when it is 90 to 100 degrees any day from mid June, to mid September. No way to show up at work in a suit that has been on a hot and smelly body from the sweat generated by the heat.
3: And not practical when going shopping is a 100 mile round trip, and you need to get your purchases home, and they don't go 80 miles an hour to keep up with traffic. Slow pokes would get run over, especially with the big trucks on the road being nearly half the traffic many days as it is a major interstate you would be traveling. Especially when some of them are a large tractor unit, pulling a fifth wheel trailer, and two additional trailers behind that for 70 feet of big vehicle.
4: Not practical for older people or people with disabilities that do not have good balance any longer.
In our part of the country, over half of all vehicles in a parking lot are full size pickups, and SUVs, with a few large trucks and motor homes thrown in the mix. Most are big 4X4 rigs. Small cars are few and far between, and if you see a Prias it is a tourist passing through in the summer.
Remember Pickups and SUVs, are rated as the most dangerous vehicles on the road. Not dangerous for their drivers and passengers, but dangerous for small cars, motorcycles, and scooters that run into one of them out on the highway (and even in town). My wife and I have 3 of them. A Blazer, a F150 pickup, and an Explorer. We have not owned cars since late 1970s, and at our age have enough vehicles to last us the rest of our lives and will not be purchasing another one.
The largest answer I can come up with is that our town/city layouts are vastly different than those in Europe.
Most Europeans don't leave their home city/area on a daily basis. Sure, you may work on one side of Seville and live on the other, but it's not like you have a 45 minute commute 30 miles away. Within the city, speed limits are often lower and streets more narrow. It makes sense.
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