Crashed cars right after an accident on winter road with snow

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Despite the end of the government shutdown – and controllers who had been calling in sick returning to work – it is unlikely that air travel will fully return to normal by Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving travel brought roughly 70 million people onto U.S. roads in 2024, and just a few weeks later, more than 100 million traveled by car around Christmas and the New Year’s celebration. This year, due to air congestion, it is likely to be more.

But traveling by car over the Thanksgiving holiday brings increasing risks. A new Samsara analysis of anonymized operational data spanning billions of miles reveals that crash rates increase by 13% during Thanksgiving week (Monday–Friday) and then spikes by 65% on the Sunday after Thanksgiving; that is the single most hazardous travel day of the holiday period. The increase is not simply a function of congestion; winter road conditions can cause vehicles to lose friction within minutes as temperatures fall faster than road surface treatments can adjust.

Extended darkness during the holiday season also plays a role—nighttime fatal crash rates are 3-4x higher than daytime.

The good news for travelers is that there will be fewer trucks on the road. During the week of Thanksgiving, many shippers scale back operations and drivers take time off, reducing the number of trucks on the road and, correspondingly, lowering the total volume of commercial crashes that week. In crashes involving large trucks, about 70% of the people killed and roughly 72% of those injured are occupants of other civilian vehicles.

But in addition to the annual curtailment in shipping, freight shipments fell sharply in October, 7.8% year over year, according to a monthly report from Cass Information Systems. The recent Cass report stated that this is caused by both continued soft demand and the fact that shippers are consolidating smaller loads into full truckloads to counter rising less-than-truckload pricing. The Cass report forecasted a potential 10% year-over-year decline in shipments during November, assuming typical seasonal trends occur.

But fewer trucks on the road does not necessarily mean safer roads. Last Thanksgiving, as passenger vehicle volume surged during the holiday week, the commercial crash rate per mile rose 13%.

Where Will It Be Most Dangerous to Drive?

Certain corridors experience extreme seasonal risk jumps. Those include:

• I-80 in Iowa: +625%
• I-80 in Wyoming: +450%
• I-40 in Arkansas: +400%
• New Jersey Turnpike (I-95): +230%
• I-90 across upstate New York (NY State Thruway): +117%

Below is a chart that provides a more detailed view of these corridor trends.

The Data Sources

Samsara is a fleet safety and management solution. The Samsara report is based on data collected and then anonymized by their Cloud-based solution. Tens of thousands of customers, representing millions of trucks, use the solution. The platform processes 14 trillion data points annually.

Cass Information Solutions is a leading provider of freight audit and payment solutions. 14,000 carriers are in their payment network, and they process $36 billion in freight spend annually. This allows them a rich data set to track freight shipments.