[_wo6a]

This is not actually that true. Germany is 7x as dense as the US, but Germany is only 5.9x as dense as the contiguous US.

About a third of the contiguous US has almost no people relative to the rest except for a few population centers (Intermountain West and Great Plains). There are several states with population densities higher than Germany, and quite a few within a factor of three, and naturally those will tend to have more people than the others.

So I'm not sure the median surrounding population density for an individual in the US would be that much different from Germany -- I'd think cultural factors, including public transportation availability, would have at least as much an effect on average distances driven.