You may have heard that the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is one of the most dangerous weekends to drive. It’s true. We often see a huge spike in serious car accidents over the weekend.
While part of this is due to higher traffic volumes, there is also the question of alcohol. Do people crash more often because they are intoxicated?
That’s exactly what happens. For instance, one study found that 28% of the deaths on the road in 2016 were listed as alcohol-impaired fatalities. That’s a very high rate, impacting more than a quarter of all deadly accidents.
Over Thanksgiving, though, they found that about 34% of these deadly wrecks linked back to alcohol. And that’s just on Thanksgiving Day, not the holiday weekend as a whole. With about a third of all deaths coming from drunk driving, it is very clear that it’s a bit more of an issue on the holidays than on the days around them.
Plus, these things can compound each other. You have more people driving at once, you have a lot of people off from work or school, and you have people driving on roads they’re not familiar with. That’s already dangerous. When you add more drinking and driving into the mix, it’s easy to see why so many people lose their lives or suffer from some very serious injuries.
If you get hurt in one of these wrecks this year, you must know what legal rights you have. For instance, you may be able to seek financial compensation to help cover things like lost wages and medical bills.