Why Thanksgiving Is the Worst Holiday To Be on the Road

Thanksgiving represents the best of times and the worst of times when it rolls around each November.

The upside? Getting together with family (depending on your family) and enjoying some delicious food.

The downside? Getting together with family (depending on your family) and the prospect of having to travel.

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New research from Zutobi confirms that hitting the road, especially for Turkey Day, can be quite dangerous.

In fact, based on numbers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Thanksgiving weekend is the deadliest holiday travel period each year on America's roads.

Over the past five years, there have been 2,414 traffic fatalities in the nation during the Thanksgiving holiday.

The leading cause of those accidents was drunk/impaired driving, which accounted for 34 percent of all of the deaths (821).

Speeding was responsible for nearly 29 percent of the fatalities (695).

DEADLIEST HOLIDAYS ON AMERICAN ROADS (2016-2020)

Thanksgiving - 2,414 fatalities
Fourth of July - 2,263 fatalities
Labor Day - 2,255 fatalities
Memorial Day - 2,161 fatalities
Christmas - 1,639 fatalities

LOOK: Here Are the 25 Best Thanksgiving movies of all time

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.