Perhaps you're focusing a lot on the roads themselves, and less on what's around the roads, or even the deliberate lack of road. More often than not EU designs

Perhaps you're focusing a lot on the roads themselves, and less on what's around the roads, or even the deliberate lack of road. More often than not EU designs will put main roads apart from the activity centers, and have shared ways or slower ways inside dense areas. From a car POV it is subobtimal and ill thought out, while from people's point of view it's pretty great in general.