Literally reading this as we are driving up I5 in a 2019 Honda, and I'm hearing a ton of tire noise right now. Haven't done this drive in a different car recently, so can't compare, but it seems to be a "normal" amount of road noise.
I peruse the Apple Watch subreddits from time to time. A lot of the posts are pictures of people’s watches on their wrist (yeah, I don’t know why, either). But here’s the relevant part: I’d bet a good 80% of the pictures are selfies taken with the poster sitting in the driver’s seat, and few are sitting in a parking lot.