Always keep your attention on the road, and especially the sides of the road, when you’re driving. We all have our stories of near-collisions (or collisions) with animals. Sweetheart Stephanie and I were driving back home from McCloud one evening last spring when a black bear lumbered across Highway 89 just in front of us. It was close call, and a bear is one of the last animals you want to hit, given the mass of the beasts. This guy (gal?) was BIG, probably four or five tons, and I’m not exaggerating (!).
Here’s the important stuff from the Washington Post’s article:
Fatalities from vehicle crashes with deer and other animals have more than doubled over the last 15 years, according to a new study by an auto insurance-funded highway safety group that cites urban sprawl overlapping into deer habitat.
The report by the Highway Loss Data Institute found that 223 people died in animal-vehicle crashes last year, up from 150 in 2000 and 101 in 1993.
The study found that insurance claims for crashes with animals is three times higher in November than it is from January to September.
“The months with the most crash deaths coincide with fall breeding season,” said Anne McCartt, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s senior vice president for research.
Note that November is now. So please be careful out there, especially at night: don’t drive faster than the stopping distance visible in your headlights.
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Ah those frisky dear (November rut)! I grew up in Oregon’s Coast Range, so vehicle-deer incidents were a part of life. I’ve hit one, and barely avoided another by swerving – which is what actually gets most people in trouble. Unfortunately (for the deer) you’re better off just hitting them.
I had a friend in high school completely total his little pickup truck, though, when he hit a deer and it came up over the hood and through the windshield. It put him into the hospital, too.
Twitter: @TheJohnSoares
There’s a lot of deer killed on the roads of Siskiyou County also.
My sister hit a deer back in the 1970s in a VW bug. Nobody was hurt (except for the deer, of course), but it really smashed up the car.
Good advice about not swerving. My bear encounter last spring was not that close of a call–I just braked really hard.