[pthreadses]

This is not at all my experience. I'm an American living in Germany who pretty regularly goes to the Alps, the roads are nothing remarkable. The amount of infrastructure built in the Alps is remarkable, but Americans are not going to bat an eye at the road conditions in the mountains of Europe, nor are they comparable to what people are talking about here.

[bitL]

That's true if you are a tourist in Alps, but as a native you'd know some really dodgy mountain roads that your clunker could climb without much trouble, but no American would ever attempt them without a proper 4x4 and life insurance. There is also a factor of underestimating distances due to latitude differences, i.e. Europe is drawn much larger and US much smaller than it should be in comparison, so looking at a map is very deceiving.