Even in sprawling suburbia, most trips a person takes are under 3 miles, eminently bikeable, but the bike infrastructure and built environment sucks for that. So people drive, from parking lot to parking lot.
The fact that the US is huge doesn't mean that the majority of miles driven are on long trips.
That is surprising to me. Is that factoring in trips to the neighbors or to the mailbox or something? Because the average US driver drives over 39 miles per day.
hmm. fair enough. I have heard the short trip stat bandied about a lot. Having spent time with people in the suburbs, even close in suburbs, the stat makes sense... if you exclude commute to work. When I visit my parents in stroadville, a trip to the store is 2 miles each way and should be easily bikeable, but bike infra is non existent so everyone drives.
One note about the framing. The average US Driver excludes everyone who isn't a driver
That's true but traveling by car is so overwhelmingly common that it doesn't swing the stats much. Only about 3% of people travel by public transit (most of which is a bus on the road anyway) and another 3% under their own power, with most of that being people who walk (mostly those who work/live in the same place).