You've cherry-picked specifically the numbers for "vehicle travel" which isn't even defined but is differentiated even by that article from air travel -- I'd read that as people driving in their own cars. Which is still concerning, but perhaps less so. Some places have even actively encouraged people w/ cars to get out on a drive as a safe way to get out of the house during lockdowns while minimizing social contacts.
Even your link calls out that the drop in air travel this year was far greater. A quick google turns up some estimates that air travel generally accounts for more than half of normal Thanksgiving travel[1], and that there was ~%50 reduction in air travel this year[2]. So that seems like closer to a 30-40% overall reduction -- still not great, but nothing like 5%.
[1] https://protrav.com/travel-411/thanksgiving-travel-statistic...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/11/30/how-20...