Many families have multiple vehicles. One example are relative who have an Accord and a Suburban. In the past, the Accord was the dad’s every day commuter car while the Suburban did local kid hauling duty plus any longer family vacations. Now, the family is likely to hit the road in the Accord for long trips instead of in the Suburban.

There is also the effect of those who only have a large truck or SUV being more likely to simply not hit the road like they used to. I bet that the percentage of RVs which are parked right now is higher than it has been in July for a long, long time.

How can the mix on the highway change so fast? Where did these vehicles go? Driving habits have most certainly changed, though. I agree that the bulk of the traffic has slowed down.

I have an Azera (love it!), so I notice Hyundais on the road. I was simply amazed at the number of Hyundais in the parks. There were certainly as many Hyundais as Hondas or Toyotas, probably more. Sometimes we would see as many as 3 Hyundais in succession. US makes were far in the minority. Passenger cars ruled.

I don’t know whether there is that much larger a proportion of Hyundais on the road away from Texas, or whether Hyundai owners are more likely to visit the parks. At any rate, I loved my Sonata and that is what impelled me to buy the Azera. Hyundai is doing something right!

Average vehicle speed definitely seems lower. I’d say most people are going 5 over the limit instead of 10 over.

Vehicle size also seems to have been reduced. There were far more sedans and compacts driving around with a sprinkling of CUVs and small SUVs. Large SUVs were much less common, and RVs and Hummers were a rarity.

Trailers and the associated gas powered toys were extremely rare. Almost no one out there was pulling a jet ski or a boat. I felt like I saw more people carrying mountain bikes and kayaks than in the past.

I also had the chance to get out on the water around the holiday, and it appeared as though the proportion of sailboats out on the water was far higher than in years past.

In MI, I also saw far fewer out-of-state plates than in the past. The out-of-state plates I did see tended to be from nearby states such as IL, IN, OH, and WI. Not nearly as many FL plates around as previous summers.

Just my personal observations regarding holiday travel this summer.