Four Eastern students Sunday were injured in a car accident near Chebanse during one of the most traveled weekends of the year.

Three students were treated and released from Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, while a fourth was flown to Loyola University Health System in Maywood, said a source close to one of the students.

Mainly, the injuries were whiplash and concussions, while the condition of the student flown to Loyola was unknown Monday night, the source said.

The accident resulted from a collision with another vehicle on Interstate 57-South near Chebanse, a town located in the east-central portion of the state between 4 and 4:30 p.m. The source suggested poor lighting of the road as a possible reason for the accident. According to figures computed from the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, sunset on Sunday was 4:24 p.m.

A police officer told one of the students that eight accidents had occurred on Interstate 57 Sunday, the most that officer could ever remember. The state had launched a program devised to reduce highway crashes and fatalities, according to a Nov. 25 Illinois State Police press release.

The names of students involved could not be released by Riverside Monday night because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 protecting the rights of patients. Normally the act, known more commonly as HIPPA, is exposed with athletes, whose injuries cannot be revealed to the media without consent.

Vehicular travel during the six-day Thanksgiving holiday is especially dangerous because of the increase of commuters, which is more than double during the Christmas holidays.

Long-distance trips, classified as ones more than 50 miles, jump 54 percent during the six-day Thanksgiving break compared to normal travel weeks, according to numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation statistics. Comparatively, travel only increases by 23 percent during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

About 91 percent of the long-distance travel is done by vehicle, with 5 to 6 percent done by flight and 2 to 3 percent by bus, train, ship or other mode, the bureau’s numbers reported.

“During the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the Illinois State Police will assign officers to special emphasis patrols to look for motorists who are driving impaired, not wearing safety belts, and committing other traffic violations,” said the state police’s director Larry G. Trent in the press release.

Figures totaling the number of accidents and fatalities were not available Monday afternoon from the state’s Public Information office, but last year 21 people died resulting from 19 fatal crashes.

In other states this Thanksgiving holiday, the California Highway Patrol reported 31 deaths from traffic accidents and more than 1,500 arrests. Some four deaths, 464 accidents and more than 2,800 arrests were reported Sunday by Connecticut state police.

The source did not know when the students would return to school, but Eastern’s internal governing policy in such cases allows for flexibility, said Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs. Usually professors or department chairs assess the situation on a case-by-case basis.

“We try to be supportive of students, particularly in situations beyond their control of physical and emotional duress,” Lord said. “We provide the flexibility to do what is the right thing under the circumstances, and I think we have a pretty good record.”

Although the number of Eastern students in transit this weekend is a difficult number to track, only 34 of the campus’ roughly 4,100 on-campus students stayed here over the Thanksgiving break, Director of Housing Mark Hudson said. Eastern’s enrollment this semester is 11,522 with 9,845 full-time students.