As a Norwegian who drives in snow at least a few times a year, it’s funny and tragic to see videos of pileups in the US when there’s 5cm of snow on the road. It’s easy to drive safely in snow, assuming you have snow tires, but you do need to slow down a lot. Even here, the first snow of the year results in multiple accidents every year, before people learn to adjust.
In reality, the single thing you need to focus on when driving in show is drastically reduced traction. You know to take corners slower, you know to keep longer distance, and you know to simply always think of the next point where you need to be stationary (or not if on an incline). But you are right, even in countries that get snow every year, there is a week or so of adaption before people relearn it.
I think, Scandinavia is a different story. A closed snow cover at say -5 degrees Celsius is quite safe compared to muddling zero degree conditions with continuous freezing and thawing, producing ice surfaces or slush. The US have this in some states the same way we have it in Central Europe (I am from Germany).
We’ve got this on the west coast where I’m from though :) The coastal climates are normally just a few degrees below zero. Granted, our snow-clearing teams are very effective, so there is rarely deep snow.
Many northern US locations get much more snow than most of the inhabited parts of Norway. Most of the places where substantial numbers of people live don't get vast amounts of snow and anyway the roads are typically cleared and easily drivable before it's time to go to work.
One really big difference is that we use tyres specifically designed for low temperatures and snow.
