Crashes, construction and jack-knifed tractor-trailers plagued the region’s drivers Wednesday as more people hit the roads this year. Airline travelers fared better than their automobile-bound peers despite warnings of massive delays at security checkpoints. On one of the busiest travel days of the year, the scene on most Washington-area highways just before lunchtime began looking like a bad rush hour with miles-long backups on the Capital Beltway and on interstates north and south of Washington.
Nearly all of the roughly 1 million people AAA Mid-Atlantic predicted would head out of town for Thanksgiving are driving this year — an 11 percent increase from 2009 and a climb that added a little more insanity to the usual Thanksgiving travel madness.
