Georgia Thanksgiving travel period has 12 fatalities
Traffic deaths in state for the holiday period drop 40 percent from 2016
By Jim Hendricks
ALBANY — Traffic fatalities over the long Thanksgiving holiday travel period in Georgia were the lowest since 2010, with 12 people losing their lives on the state’s roadways.
None of the fatalities occurred in Southwest Georgia.
The Department of Public Safety reported Monday afternoon that for the travel period that began at 6 p.m. Wednesday and ended at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, 11 fatalities were investigated by the Georgia State Patrol and one by a local law enforcement agency, the Gwinnett County Police Department.
That represents a 40 percent reduction in fatalities from the Thanksgiving travel period in 2016, when 20 people perished on Georgia highways and roads. The last time the number of traffic deaths for the Thanksgiving period dipped under 14 was in 2010, when 11 people died, according to Albany Herald archives.
GSP Post 32 in Athens and Post 20 in Dublin worked the most fatalities, with three each. Calhoun Post 43, Gainesville Post 6, Paulding Post 29, Toccoa Post 7 and Dalton Post 5 each worked single-fatality wrecks, according to tweeted reports by DPS over the holiday period.
Statewide, GSP troopers investigated 627 traffic crashes over the holiday period that resulted in 294 injuries. In addition, DPS says, 299 people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, 11,289 citations were handed out and 15,619 warnings were issued.
Those numbers were up from last year, when troopers investigated 608 wrecks with 286 injuries and cited 273 motorists for DUI.
Highway travel was expected to be its highest for Thanksgiving since 2005. AAA Auto Club said 50.9 million Americans would travel out of town (50 or more miles from home) at some point over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday period, an increase of 3.3 percent from last Thanksgiving. Of those, 45.5 million were expected to drive.
In Georgia, the number of travelers was expected to be up about the same percentage — 3.2 percent — with 1.3 million of the 1.4 million Georgians heading away from home driving to their destinations.
The most deaths ever recorded in Georgia over the Thanksgiving holiday period was 43 in 1969, with the fewest being the four recorded in 1949.
While most holiday periods vary in length depending on what day of the week a holiday falls upon, the Thanksgiving period is 102 hours annually because holiday always is observed on a Thursday.
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