Safety urged as holiday travel ramps up

State transportation officials are issuing an early reminder to drivers in Iowa to be careful during the Thanksgiving holiday, which is expected to see an upturn in travelers.

Officials say a combination of winter weather, drivers who've been drinking and other factors have proved deadly.

Over the last decade, the Iowa Department of Transportation said, the Thanksgiving holiday has had the highest number of traffic deaths among the six holidays it tracks.

Last year, 10 people died in traffic accidents in Iowa during the Thanksgiving period, which runs from noon Wednesday to midnight Sunday. Three of those fatalities involved drinking drivers.

The auto club AAA is projecting the number of Americans traveling for the holiday will increase 11.4 percent from last year, with about 42.2 million travelers taking a trip at least 50 miles away from home. Last year, 37.9 million Americans traveled during the holiday.

The auto club said the double-digit increase in Thanksgiving travel would signify an important upturn in volume for the holiday after a year of negligible growth in 2009 (0.2 percent) and two years after a historic 25.2 percent decline in travel in 2008. While the fore­cast for an 11.4 percent increase in Thanksgiving travel is significant, the increase in the number of travelers - 4.3 million - is less than half of the volume lost from 2007 through 2009, AAA said.

This year's expected 42.2 million travelers remain almost 30 percent below the 2005 peak of 58.6 million travelers, the auto club noted.

The projected increase in holiday travel appears to be the result of modestly improved economic conditions since last year, including an increase in gross domestic product, real disposable personal income and household net worth combined with a decrease in consumer debt, the auto club said.