As an American, I have only ever seen the opposite. Pretty much everyone where I'm at just mows over the leaves. Blowers mostly used to clear streets and sidewalks. Rakes are sometimes used to collect leaves and burn them, but even that is uncommon.

However, I live in the midwest. We don't have as many trees here as the east or west coasts.

I'm on the East coast and I do mulch leaves with the mower for most of my lawn. However there are parts of the property where we have more trees and where leaves accumulate from being blown by the wind from other parts of the lawn. In those parts the lawn would probably die if I didn't clear the leaves myself.

However I also have honeylocust trees which drop loads of these large bean-like seed pods and these stems after the leaves fall which bunch up and can only be best described as like "wads of shaved pubic hair." I also have sweetgum trees which drop these hard, spiky seed pods that I also need to rake up. The mower can turn those into projectiles.

Really the best solution, in my case at least, would be to alter the landscaping in that area to something that would be unaffected by the leaves, but I don't have the time for that now. So clear leaves I do.

That's the smart way to go, decomposing leaves fertilize

This, same in Australia. Blow it into the road or the neighbours. Then no longer my problem. What is so difficult with using a rake and picking it up?

The American neighborhoods I've lived in, the lawn care companies blow them into piles, and then the city collects with the truck.

There's a LOT of leaves in the northeast. They absolutely NEED to be collected. It would bury the roads here if they didn't.

Just because they do that doesn’t mean they’re supposed to.

uhh, usually they bag them up where I've lived.

I have literally never seen this anywhere I’ve lived. It’s always been the opposite.

You're lucky. On multiple occasions I've had rocks and leaves blown into my face by one of these people, while I'm driving in a convertible car with the top down.