Drive Safe
These 3 Texas roads declared the most dangerous for holiday travel
If you're about to go over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house, keep this in mind: Texas is home to three of the deadliest roads for holiday travel.
Financial site ValuePenguin looked at reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and collated data from more than 2,700 fatal car accidents between 2015 and 2018 to find which roads are the deadliest during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I-10 (California to Florida) going through Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, and Jacksonville is No. 1 on the list. I-35 (Texas to Minnesota), which travels through Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, is listed at No. 4. Meanwhile, I-20 (Texas to South Carolina) running through Dallas; Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and Atlanta is fifth.
These join I-95 (Florida to Maine) and I-80 (California to New Jersey) as the most dangerous during holiday times, with all five accounting for 151 deaths between the three years studied. That's 15 percent of all holiday travel deaths on the entire National Highway System, despite making up only 6 percent of total mileage.
Travis County is considered the most dangerous area for those traveling I-35 on Thanksgiving; it ranks as the third most dangerous for Christmas travel. In fact, the most dangerous areas of I-35, according to the report, are all located in Texas.
Obviously, traffic volume along these highways likely has a big impact on the high number of deaths, but drunk driving is also a factor. Roughly one in every three fatal holiday-season traffic accidents involved a drunken driver.
