At least 16 people were killed in Michigan’s 13 Labor Day weekend car accidents as of 10:30 p.m. Monday.
The holiday weekend officially began at 6 p.m. Friday and ended at 11:59 p.m. Monday.
Twenty-seven people were killed in 20 accidents last year, up from the 18 people killed in 17 accidents in 1999.
Six of the accidents in 2000 were alcohol related.
State police Dispatcher Jim Lorenz said weekend traffic was normal for a holiday weekend - heavy.
“Fatals happen and there’s no pattern to them,” he said. “If people are out working on them right now we won’t hear for hours and hours. Getting reports to us is the last thing on their mind.”
More than 1.7 million Michigan residents were expected to travel during the three-day weekend, with nearly 70 percent of the travelers staying within the state, AAA Michigan said.
An estimated 78 percent of the trips are made in a car, truck or van.
State police Sgt. Robert Thorton said vacationers tend to have more problems with traffic and accidents on the trip home than on their way to vacation destinations.
Most vacationers choose to return at the last possible moment, creating a rush of traffic, Thorton said.
“The coming back is the worst,” he said. “They leave in waves. They have to get up early to go punch the clock.
“It’s just crazy. After dark, it’s worse.”
Thorton said Labor Day weekend is the precursor to Thanksgiving weekend, another tough travel-period.
“We are just trying to slow them down,” he said. “Between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., we are swamped with phone calls saying, ‘They should have been here by now.’
“It would be nice if we could get through one holiday knowing that there wouldn’t be some funeral on Wednesday or Thursday somewhere because of the holiday.”
East Lansing Sgt. Mark VandeWouwer said East Lansing’s streets have been out of harm’s way in the past when problems typically occurred along expressways.
But only two of the 13 reported accidents this weekend were on expressways. The rest were on city and county roads.
“A lot of people leave East Lansing for the weekend, so things are generally kind of quiet,” he said.
“There were actually more people (in town) this weekend than usual because of the gas prices. I know if I were a student I couldn’t afford $1.70 a gallon.”
Nursing sophomore Carly Ferguson said traffic wasn’t as bad as she expected it to be on her way back to East Lansing from her home in Battle Creek. She said she made sure to obey traffic laws because of the number of police watching the roadways.
“My parents said it would be worse,” she said, while unloading her belongings from the trip. “They wanted me to come back earlier in the day, but it wasn’t bad.”
Jamie Gumbrecht can be reached at gumbrec1@msu.edu.
