Millions hit the road for Memorial Day Weekend

SALISBURY, Md. – Memorial Day Weekend is shaping up to be one of the busiest travel days yet.

This year, AAA is projecting a record of more than 45 million people to travel between Thursday and Monday.

All of those people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from their homes.

That’s an increase of 1.4 million travelers from the year before.

39.4 million of those are expected to travel by automobile.

Lieutenant Timothy Corbin at the Maryland State Police Salisbury barracks says drivers can expect increased police patrols.

“Every barrack has a significant increase, it varies based on the number of personnel, but we have seven extra troopers working each shift during the holiday weekend, so that’s pretty consistent across the state every barrack is going to have multiple additional personnel on every shift,” said Lt. Corbin.

Troopers will be on the look out for impaired – aggressive – and reckless drivers, as well as people who are speeding.

Corbin also has some advice for those hitting the roads this weekend.

“The advice we give is to either leave much earlier in the day or wait until later in the evening to try to avoid most of the traffic, but there’s a lot of beautiful towns on the Eastern Shore that people can stop at and take a break whatever they need to do to break up the drive or to come on an off-peak time,” said Lt. Corbin.

Officials say the best travel time is before 11 a.m. on Friday, noon on Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday and 2 p.m. Monday.

AAA says you should be realistic about how much you can drive in a day and limit yourself to 5 hours if possible.