Roads throughout the area may have fewer drivers this holiday weekend, but law enforcement and the AAA say there are still plenty of dangers.

In Georgia, about 1.06 million people will travel this weekend, according to AAA. Of those, 952,000 will press rubber to road and travel by car.

In Tennessee, 857,000 people will be in the skies, on the road or on rails this weekend, the AAA says. Of those, 776,000 will be on the highways.

Those figures are down from last year and, across the country, travel is down by about 2 percent -- mostly because of the sour economy and high gas prices.

But don't expect to feel excessively roomy on the roads. In all, an estimated 37.1 million people will be traveling by car over the Fourth of July, AAA says.

"It feels like traffic levels around that of a Friday afternoon," said Chattanooga police Sgt. Al Tallant, speaking Thursday afternoon. "We are already seeing it pick up a little bit."

Though there may be fewer people on the roads, "it's still an awful lot of people on the roads," said Gregg Laskoski, a spokesman for AAA.

In fact, projections put out by AAA could be wrong, he said. A survey sponsored by AAA polled drivers in late May about whether they planned to travel this Fourth, Mr. Laskoski said, but since then gas prices have fallen and some aspects of the economy appear to have improved.

Because Independence Day falls on a Saturday, police expect high traffic levels and an increased potential for impaired travelers. Police from Tennessee to Georgia -- including just about every municipal and county jurisdiction -- said they planned to put more officers on the roads and many planned sobriety checkpoints.

"When a holiday falls on the weekend, you just naturally have more people on the roads and more people drinking," Georgia State Patrol Cpl. Andy Gideon said.

So police from both states will be out in full force. Georgia officials said they plan to saturate roads with troopers and to conduct roadblocks to test for sobriety.

The big travel day this weekend is likely going to be Sunday, both Sgt. Tallant and Cpl. Gideon predict.

"We're going to be out in full force on the travel days, and this weekend we consider those to be Thursday, Friday and Sunday," Cpl. Gideon said.

Tennessee is rolling out its "Don't Get Nailed ..." campaign to encourage motorists not to get tickets or arrested on DUI charges.

Vehicles with 10-foot nails driven through the hoods have appeared in high-visibility locations across Middle Tennessee since June 22 in an effort to spread the word.

"There is never a good reason for getting behind the wheel after you've been drinking," TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely said. "Unfortunately, many people are still not getting the message, so we hope this new campaign will help draw attention to the problem of drunken driving in Tennessee."

TDOT will suspend lane closures during the 78-hour holiday traffic period. There was no major roadwork in Chattanooga that should slow traffic, Sgt. Tallant.

All the police efforts are in place to reduce crashes and make the roads safer, officers said. In Georgia, there were 22 traffic deaths over last year's Fourth of July and two were due to alcohol, the state patrol reports.

There were eight deaths in Tennessee during the same period last year.

The extra police patrols work, one group says, but the random roadblocks are ineffective, according to the American Beverage Institute, the lobbying group for restaurants.

"Sobriety checkpoints are excessively expensive, ineffective at catching drunken drivers, and they target moderate drinkers instead of the root cause of today's drunk driving problem -- hardcore alcohol abusers," said Sarah Longwell, ABI managing director.

Reports from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire show that roving patrols catch up to 10 times more drunken drivers than checkpoints, according to the institute. Moreover, roving patrols can catch speeders, distracted and aggressive drivers, in addition to drunks, the institute said.

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