The holiday also marks the unofficial start of summer with backyard cookouts and road trips

Carleen Johnson
The Center Square

On Memorial Day 2025, America honored and remembered the men and women who have died serving their country.

The holiday also marks the unofficial start of summer with backyard cookouts and road trips.

That road trip is a little bit less expensive when it comes to gas prices, but in Washington the average price for a gallon of regular is still way above the national average at $4.41 a gallon, down from $4.56 a year ago. The national average is $3.17 per gallon, down from $3.59 a year ago, according to AAA.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans plan to grill out over Memorial Day weekend, while 17% will take a trip, according to WalletHub.

The average cost for a cookout this year is up about 4% from 2024 at $31.40 for a family of four.

Chip Lupo, writer for WalletHub, shared some other Memorial Day food facts with The Center Square.

“[Eight-hundred and eighteen] is the number of hotdogs consumed every second from Memorial Day to Labor Day, for a total of about seven billion in all,” said Lupo. “And I’m sure a billion of those are just from Joey Chestnut himself,” he joked referring to the competitive eater who set a new record in 2024 for the most hot dogs eaten in 10 minutes at 83, beating his previous record of 76.

Memorial Day is the second-best day for beer sales in the U.S, just behind the 4th of July and ahead of Labor Day.

“Forty-five million Americans will travel over Memorial Day weekend, which is a 3% increase over 2024,” said Lupo. “3.5 million are going to travel by plane.”

Airport officials at Seatac Airport, south of Seattle said between last Wednesday and Monday, 970,000 travelers were expected to come and go through the airport.

According to the National Safety Council, 443 may die on U.S. roads this Memorial Day holiday period. During the 2023 Memorial Day holiday period, an estimated 469 people died on U.S. roads.

“Almost 48,000 is the estimated number of injuries from car accidents over Memorial Day weekend,” said Lupo who noted that 43% of all traffic fatalities that occur over Memorial Day weekend are alcohol related.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, between 1775 and 1991, the U.S. military recorded 651,031 battle deaths and 539,054 non-combat deaths, totaling 1.19 million fatalities among U.S. service members.

USA Facts reports from 1980 to 2022, there were 60,770 recorded deaths, of which 50,789 (or 83.6%) were due to accidents, illness and self-inflicted wounds.

There are currently about 1.3 million active-duty military service members and more than 800,000 reserve and National Guard members.

This report was first published by The Center Square.