Photo credit: Ben Harding // Shutterstock Just the thought of car shopping is enough to put a bad taste in most people’s mouths. Stories abound of well-intentioned customers getting talked into a pricey new ride by smooth-talking salesmen. That’s particularly true when it comes to used car shopping: No one wants to end up with a lemon, and first-time car buyers are often particularly nervous about buying a used vehicle in need of extensive work down the road—or in the next month or two.

With air travel still suppressed in the wake of COVID-19, those making holiday travel plans will likely be traveling by car. While reduced public air travel helps to prevent the spread of the virus, increased road travel raises the risk for accidents and road fatalities, making holidays a particularly dangerous time to travel. Around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, the rate of fatal car accidents increases by over 10 percent.

Travel has been severely impacted by COVID-19. As the holiday season approaches, those who do plan a trip will likely take to the roads rather than the air, in part, to avoid crowds of people. Even though traveling by car reduces contact with other people, it still comes with its own dangers, especially when driving in winter weather conditions such as snow and ice. Despite a gradual recovery since late March, air travel still remains well below 2019 levels.

Crime in the U.S. has trended downward since the early 1990s, and new data from the University of Pennsylvania suggests that COVID-19 has caused these numbers to drop even further across the nation’s largest cities. Since the onset of the pandemic, property crime, violent crime, and drug crime all experienced double-digit percentage declines when compared to averages over the previous five year period—a trend attributed to more residents staying home.

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, commuting was a daily habit for most American workers. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans spent an average of 4.5 hours per week on their commute in 2018. Although the amount of time that the average person spent commuting had been steadily increasing, the predominant shift to remote work in 2020 is reversing this trend—possibly for the long-term. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the amount of time that an average person spends commuting has been rising.