Memes

You're correct, I am unfamiliar with driving in the US - I've lived here my whole life, but have made it into my mind 20s without a license. Needless to say, I don't live in a particularly rural area (I live in a suburbs where I can ride my electric bike to nearby stores or the train to commute downtown). I wasn't trying to suggest people pass on the shoulder though. I hadn't thought of winding roads, but that's a fair point where there could potentially be two lanes but it's still not safe to pass. For the single lane scenario I still don't think it makes sense to suggest a giant RV regularly move into the shoulder (if it's even present), especially not "any time there is a car behind them" as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread.

Regardless, in general I think it's more important to strive for systemic solutions rather than expecting/hoping for/pressuring all individuals to act in the way you want. In this case, since we're talking about rural areas, I think fixing our broken rail network would help immensely. Building the network and corresponding culture around trains for inter city travel would be cheaper for individuals and the government, better for the environment, would allow everyone on board to relax, and it'd even be faster than driving. For popular vacation locations the frequency could even be high enough to eliminate the last barrier of it being on a sometimes inconvenient schedule! Now, of course the locations themselves may not be easily traversable without a car (and trust me I'm aware of how often that applies), but if you're trying to escape concrete jungles anyways then perhaps walking around was the goal anyways. Otherwise, you can probably rent a car (or a bike!) and still save money compared to the fuel and maintenance cost on driving the vehicle there.