At least 40 wrecks in Mid-Missouri Wednesday after holiday travel begins
AAA says about 46.3 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from Wednesday through Sunday, the highest number of people traveling for Thanksgiving since 2007.
Almost 90 percent of those people will be driving.
Wednesday afternoon, the Missouri Department of Transportation said traffic was backed up between Kingdom City and Warrenton, even though all lanes were open.
AAA says they expect nearly one million people in Missouri alone will be driving for Thanksgiving.
MoDOT says with all of that extra holiday traffic, it does not take much to slow traffic on Missouri’s busiest highways.
Mike Schupp, Missouri Department of Transportation: “As we saw this morning we had a little bit of snow. Often times with those first snows of we see a lot of accidents that could’ve been prevented. People need to take their vehicles off cruise control. Front wheel drives get along very well, but we see a lot of four wheel drive vehicles that are in accidents because they’re not in four-wheel drive because there’s just not much snow. But you just really need to slow down and give yourself time and be prepared to get to where you’re wanting to go safely.”
Columbia police say there were about 40 car crashed in and around Columbia from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, including one deadly crash on Paris Road between a van and City of Columbia garbage truck. The driver of the van later died at University Hospital. Police say road conditions due to weather is believed to be a factor.
Schupp says MoDOT put down a pre-treatment earlier this week to try and prevent more wrecks.
Schupp: “We did pre-treat the bridges due to the fact that they had been washed off from the recent rains. So we pre-treated them yesterday and the day before so that we could prevent any elevated structures from freezing up before the events come in.”
MoDOT says it will also have staff monitoring traffic signals Friday with extra traffic expected for Black Friday and the Mizzou home football game. It also has electronic message boards set up throughout the state warning drivers if a crash is ahead.
MoDOT says most construction projects will be shut down Wednesday through Monday morning to help with congestion from the holiday travelers.
You can find MoDOT road conditions here.
