Pennsylvania’s ‘most dangerous roads during Thanksgiving’: report

The National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) has previously reported how Thanksgiving — in marking the start of the holiday season — tends to see an increase in vehicle crashes and fatalities.

A separate report has fleshed out this trend, and has gone so far as to highlight the roads in each state that are “the most dangerous” during the holiday.

Conducted and published by Truckinfo.net — a trucking industry platform dedicated “to help give commercial drivers the tools they need to be successful” — the study pulled data from both the NHTSA and the U.S. Census Bureau relating to fatality statistics on Thanksgiving (the statistics used from the Census were from 2021).

After divvying up the numbers by region, Texas was found to have the most fatalities overall with a total of 73 (or 2.47 per 1 million people).

Pennsylvania ranked quite high as well — 12th overall, with a total of 15 fatalities on the day (1.15 per million).

As for the purported “most dangerous” road in the state, the Truckinfo.net report gives that delineation to I-0078 Northampton County, with the roading seeing five fatalities on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2023 is certainly expected to be one of the busiest, travel-wise, in quite some time: The Associated Press reports how millions of passengers will be crowding airports leading up to the 23rd, while AAA estimates a whopping 55.4 million will travel at least 50 miles from their home to celebrate.

Nationwide, many of the fatalities seen on Thanksgiving can be attributed to drunk driving. Fatalities, too, are up by almost 20 percent when comparing 2020 and 2021 to the two previous years.

The NHSTA stresses that people buckle up “every time” and to, of course, avoid driving under the influence.