Travel is a large part of America’s society today. There are many different trends that happen such as where the popular places are to travel, what are the means of transportation to get there, or what are the best packages to use.

How a person gets to their destination has fluctuated over the course of time. Sometimes it depends on how much the cost of the transportation cost, other times it matters on how fast a person wants to get to the destination, and some of the time it matters on what means of transportation is the safest.

There are more people who are taking road trips than any other way of getting to a destination.

In the past many of my family vacations consisted of sitting the back seat of a minivan trying to entertain myself for hours. In fact it was a treat when we got to fly to the vacation spot. For my family it was all a cost thing. It was cheaper to drive with six people instead of fly. Also, another perk to driving in the car for the long hours is all the different places that a family can stop and look around. With flying most of the time is spent in the airport if a person has a layover at a spot that is not their destination.

When I was flying to Oregon, one of the layovers was in Colorado. I tell people that I have been to Colorado, but honestly all I saw of this beautiful state was the inside of an airport. If we had used our car and drove through Colorado on our way to Oregon, then I would have really experienced the beautiful scenery of this state.

So, what makes a person choose the means of transportation that they are going to take. Is it based on safety, money, the distance, or some other factor that isn’t even related to traveling? I asked some of my friends on Facebook what determines how they travel. A majority of the people said the cost and which means of transportation is cheaper than the other. A few others said that it is the distance of the place they are going the helps them to decide.

The United States Bureau of Transportation states that, “Almost 9 out of 10 long-distance trips are taken by personal vehicle, and about 10 percent use public transportation modes. Over 7 percent of long-distance trips are taken by air, while 2 percent are by bus (including scheduled, charter, and other bus trips). Train travel represents almost 1 percent of long-distance trips.” Looking at this a person can assume that it is based on cost because traveling by a personal vehicle is much cheaper then jumping on an airplane with a bunch of kids and taking off.

Looking at the safety of the different transportation, it is shocking to see what the most dangerous means of transportation is. 96.1 The Eagle, a radio station that is located in New York looks at the different means of transportation and how dangerous each one is. For cars it is 4 deaths per billion miles. If a person decides to fly then it is 0.5 deaths per billion miles. Buses have the same death rate as a plane. Trains have the lowest death rate which is 0.2 deaths per billion miles.

What means of transportation is moving forward? More people are choosing to drive instead of fly. Perhaps it is because of the decreased gas prices in the United States. With having gas below the $2.50 per gallon mark it encourages more personal vehicle usage. While looking at a few charts the use of airplanes has gone down. Perhaps this has to deal with the different terrorist attacks that have happened around the world. As a matter of fact there was recently a terrorist attack in the Brussels airport within this past week. This causes more people to question the safety of airplanes and choose to drive instead.

Experts in the field believe that in the years to come people will continue to travel more than they are now. According to the US travel association it have a chart showing that within the next six years travel will increase by about 200. According to some data, that means that people will increase their use of their personal vehicle for their means of transportation.

Now looking at this all if the use of personal vehicle increases over the past few years for using for vacation travel and the use of airplanes has gone down. The correlation would be according to cost because the gas prices has gone down over the past year making it cheaper for a person to use their personal vehicle for traveling. If gas prices stay at the same price that they are at, the use of personal vehicles will go up.

Maybe it’s time to start looking at getting a new car for all of the fun adventures that you will be going on in your personal vehicle.