Actually the area I lived was pretty rural, that was precisely the problem. Roads were high speed, car exclusive roads with no sidewalk and if there was one people would look at you like you were a criminal for not being in a car so it felt wrong to use them anyways.

It didn’t matter if there was awesome woods to roam around in 5 minutes down the road, walking/bicycling there not only felt like doing something wrong based on the behavior of 100% of the adults around me, it also was extraordinarily dangerous and just not worth the discomfort of feeling like I was going to die any second from a 4000 pound metal box slamming into me at 45mph (and running me over because the hood is 5 feet off the ground for no reason other than it looks cool or something).