Ohio analysis says crashes up around Thanksgiving

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion is warn­ing Thanks­giv­ing trav­el­ers that an analy­sis shows the num­ber of crashes spikes the Wednes­day evening before the hol­i­day and the fol­low­ing Sun­day evening.

In a release Tues­day, the depart­ment says traf­fic vol­ume increases nearly 70 per­cent over the five-day hol­i­day period.

Dur­ing the period in 2010, there were 3,229 crashes, with 83 injuries and 16 deaths.

Depart­ment Direc­tor Jerry Wray says the analy­sis of the hol­i­day period from 2006 to 2010 shows more than half of the col­li­sions were due to dri­ver behav­ior, includ­ing dis­tracted dri­ving or fol­low­ing another vehi­cle too closely.

Posted by AP News on Nov 23 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.