July 4 Getaway: Fight High Gas Prices

July 3, 2009— -- Hot dogs, fireworks and, unfortunately, traffic.

There's no denying it, but all three are rites of passage each summer for the July 4th weekend. But there is some good news for travelers this year: while gas prices are up, they are nowhere near last year's all-time record high. And expect to see fewer cars on this road this year as American families choose shorter vacations.

"Gas prices are significantly cheaper than they were last year at this time," said Robert Sinclair Jr., spokesman for AAA in New York.

Last summer, gas hit an all-time high of $4.05 a gallon. The average price of a gallon of regular gas now stands at $2.64, according to the Energy Information Administration. While that might be good for summer drivers, remember that at the end of December gas was just $1.61 a gallon. In five months, the average price of gas has shot up more than a dollar a gallon.

"It's that precipitous rise that people are paying attention to," Sinclair said.

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This weekend, AAA expects 32.6 million people to take road trips, down 2.6 percent from last year. In fact, all travel this weekend is expected to be down except for air travel which spiked 4.9 percent after airlines cut ticket prices to fill seats left vacant by the recession.

Sinclair said that he expects driving trips to be shorter this weekend too. In the New York area last year, AAA received 16,000 requests for maps. This year, it fell to 14,000. Also, the tour guides being requested this summer are for areas a lot closer to home than in past years.

"People are still traveling, but staying closer to home," Sinclair said.

When driving this weekend, be extra careful. Friday the most dangerous day of the year to drive and July 4 is the second-most dangerous day, Sinclair said.

"They're drinking, they're not wearing seatbelts. Overall, for every year that we monitor these things, we've seen that 65 percent of the people who are killed in car crashes weren't wearing their seat belt. It is very very obvious and clear that seat belts that make such a tremendous difference. About 16,000 people a year are killed because of drunk driving," he said. "If you could make people put their seat belts on and not drink and drive we could cut the number those killed every year by more than half. It's still a time to keep safety first."