Direct comparison of time spent in vehicles between tour 74 (March 2006) and tour 182 (March 2015)
Interestingly, the (relative) number of players who don't care about that GV thing has stayed about the same. The share of players doing GV only has about doubled, but is still on a very low level.
The real increase in GV usage comes from the 'casual drivers', those who play the whole game
including vehicles. This group seems to spend more time in vehicles than before.
Please keep in mind that there are 9 years between the two samples and the individual players making up the chart are not the same for the most part.