Posted on 03/11/2022 8:55:43 AM PST by SJackson
Edited on 03/11/2022 8:26:35 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
There are a lot of bad decisions you might make if a deer appears in front of you in the road while you’re driving. You’ll be startled, it will freeze, and your brain will sound the alarm that you should do something now—but please, avoid the urge to swerve around it.
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I am sorry for your loss.
I have lived in KS for 33 years and have the dubious honor of having hit 5 deer over this time.
You are spot on. Hit them square on and keep the steering wheel steady. If you hit a deer on either corner on the front, they will ping pong along the quarter panels and do even more damage.
There needs to be even more coordinated hunting seasons to take out the does. Everybody wants to shoot a buck.
I had a friend in college that was on a motorcycle when a ruffed grouse flushed from a bushy bank on the roadside and hit him in the chest. Knocked him and his bike over. Luckily he always wore a lot of protective gear when he rode.
Glad you survived the buck collision.
I live north of Manhattan by the Tuttle Dam. Boatloads of deer abound.
Anymore, I do my level best to keep my night driving to a minimum.
MFO
See the movie John Q
Nealy all deer strikes are the fault of poor driving. Some times there’s nothing that could of helped, but most are just bad driving. I can’t enumerate the times I’ve stopped or slowed to a crawl, and had a bunch of deer run in front of me. You see their eye shine, you see deer that have already crossed, you see the big yellow signs telling you there are deer crossing and you slow down... People who hit deer are likely to not be not paying attention. I do know a guy whose car was hit by a deer while stopped at a red light.
If we’ve had a freeze in PA, I’m gonna hit it and take home a good bit of meat for my freezer.
That is if the guts haven’t been ruptured.
You just can’t tell the outcome. Lady deputy sheriff in my county hit a moose and was killed. Early in the morning, another time of activity, though moose kind of wander around all the time in general.
And sometimes you have no time to decide anything. That’s where lack of speed is your only friend.
I use the old railroad trick, which is to sound the horn in a rapid-fire broken-up beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep pattern. Works with all mammals in my experience (including bears), except ones that happen to be deaf.
PS. I absolutely slow down while doing this. I am not going to keep barreling towards the animal.
“Deerberger, dead ahead!”
Yep, and as an aware and alert driver you should already know if someone is behind you and about how far behind.
That was actually my wife that was involved in that one. She was in the Flint Hills heading back to rural Omaha from her plant that she handles in Emporia and was going up 77 so she could stop in to see my family in Beatrice. A couple of farmers pulled over and got the deer out of the windshield and she proceeded to head north. She got pulled over south of Marysville by a county Mountie and they made her follow them into town and told her the car wasn’t safe to drive. My late brother went and picked her up and drove her back to Beatrice where I picked her up. Had to have the car towed back to get repaired. That was a pain in the butt and an expensive deal for the insurance company.
“Moose....”
I had a colleague from Maine who lost an in-law to a moose. It entered through the two door pickup’s windshield, and didn’t leave.
My wife used to scream and yell at me to swerve or stop whenever a animal ran into the road on camping trips. I explained to her that in a 3/4 ton truck with camper and full of heavy gear I wasn’t about to swerve for anything. Well, she still screams and I still don’t swerve.
I also tell her that we are improving the species by flattening the ones that are stupid enough to run in front of a truck.
Have a friend, who a long time ago, swerved to avoid a rabbit and hit a tree. Still funny.
“Judging from number dead deer I see...”
There is a short stretch of 45mph road near us — they pick up 50-100 deer there a year. Down the hill about a half mile there’s a bog hidden by thick brush — you can’t set your foot without crunching old bones. There must be a thousand deer that dragged themselves down the hill to die.
There was a person from Texas that had posted their belief a while back that deer were only a problem near town. I would suppose that if a person lived somewhere in the desert environment of West Texas that thought might have made sense.
The idea of deer strikes occurring due to bad driving may make sense to someone driving in environments where the surrounding environment is clear enough to see or if the person speaking has the time to drive long distances at 15-25mph.
I assure you that if you drove in this environment your opinion would drastically change.
Was driving a Suburban on a back road out of Kuwait City through restricted Oil Fields one night doing 100 MPH.
Out of no where - 2 Camels ran across the road 20 yards in front of our vehicle - my life flashed before my eyes.
I saw a flying duck take out half of the split windshield on an old Kenworth. Personally I had a flying turkey crack the wind fairing above the roof of my tractor. If he would have been a foot lower he would’ve been through the windshield in my face.
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