The Georgia State Patrol is predicting 3,750traffic crashes with 1,398 injuries and 16 deaths this holiday period. The holiday extends from 6 p.m. Wednesday to midnight Sunday.
“Thanksgiving is the most heavily traveled holiday of the year and that’s a recipe for disaster that doesn’t belong on anyone’s holiday menu,” said Bob Dallas, director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
The majority of the crashes are preventable, Dallas said.
“The Georgia State Patrol reports alcohol and the lack of a properly buckled safety belt are involved in almost half of the fatal crashes they investigated during the Thanksgivingtravel period last year,” Dallas said in a statement.
During last year’s Thanksgiving holiday, Georgia state troopers responded to 3,815 crashes with 1,457 injuries and 19 deaths, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Drivers should expect safety checkpoints this holiday, police said.
Police will beef up patrols, but officers are asking drivers to help by slowing down, wearing their seat belts and not driving drunk.
“Everyone’s best defense against careless and impaired drivers is a buckled seat belt and that’s a fact,” a police spokesman said.
More than 70 percent of motorists involved in crashes in the U.S. in 2008 survived because of seatbelts, the spokesman said.
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