OT: Deer & Trucks don't mix!!!!!!

[Marcus Dahl]

You wouldn't believe it. This morning on my way from my Wed. night gig I ran into a herd of 7 deer crossing over a 2 lane black top road. Another truck was coming from the other direction and I had no choice but to hit one head on. I'm ok, but you should see what a healthy doe can do to an automobile. This is a warning for all that are out late at night playing music etc.!!!!  :x

[Nasse]

Sorry I could not resist myself to posting this. Peter or Aron remove it if you think so. But we have those animals here in Finland too, and some big male ones weight 900kg or more... They have this brown-greyish fur so you dont see them easily... Nice warning signs anyhow, tourists steal and collect those, can you imagine?

[Peter Snowberg]

I'm glad you're still with up Marcus. I've seen the damage a deer can do to the front of a big stationwagon. Anyway... I'm glad you're safe.

Take care,
-Peter

[Nasse]

With those animals we have here the bigger and higher your vehicle is, the better chances to survive you have. Look at the height of the legs and imagine getting 900kg of meat and bones at your windscreen...

[AL]

Marcus,

Sorry to hear about that.  Glad you're OK.  How's your truck?  I just clipped a doe a few months back up here in WV.  Now that winter is starting to kick in their coats are getting darker and harder to see.  Man can those things do some damage.   Did you kill it?  I hate seeing a deer limp off into the woods for 2 reasons 1) I hate to see the thing suffer and 2) If does $5K of damage to my truck I'm more than a little peeved and I want to make sure thing isn't getting up (sick satisfaction I guess).  Of course if you do kill it then you're the "wonderful" task of trying to drag it off the road so the next guy doesn't take off his oil pan.

Nasse, your sign ....  That's a moose or elk or somethin'.  Funny ...  fortunately we don't have anything that big here (east coast)  I can't imagine what something like that would do to a car.  I'm sure someone in Montana has a horror story they can tell you.

AL

[Bill_F]

My wife hit a fox the other night. Don't worry everybody is alright! (except the fox of course).

Bill

[Mark Hammer]

I'm not teaching anymore but when I did I would get the whole gamut of excuses and requests to write an exam on an alternate date.  One I was waiting for, but never got, would have been a request from a student who was actually in prison awaiting trial for hiring a hit man to murder her family ("Dear Sir, Can I write the final on another date?  I'm in the slammer.")  Wisely, she dropped theo course.  She was failing because she was spending too much time meeting with the hit man (actually an undercover cop) and not enough time studying or coming to class [true story].

One which I DID actually get a few years ago was from a student whose vehicle collided with a moose one evening and he awoke to find moose brains and head parts essentially in his lap.  If you think his vehicle was a write-off, let me tell you his modelling career was even more seriously terminated.  The guy's whole head was covered in stitches.  I suppose it is a testament to the fussiness of other profs that the guy felt compelled to actually hand-deliver me a note from his doctor when he was well enough to come back.

Some 15 years ago, I used to teach at a community college on Vancouver Island.  The highway back to the city where I lived was a twisty, windy thing. Very scenic, but on some winter evenings, when you'd get just a light dusting of snow blowing around, or other evenings when there would be splotches of fog in every dip in the road, I'd live in mortal terror of deer emerging from the side of the road around one of the many hairpin turns.  *Everything* looked like one, and when you'd finally bring your panic into line, and accepted that it was JUST fog or JUST a snow squall, there beside the road was either a deer corpse or a live one munching away blithely, and your heart would quickly resume its position in your throat.

In Newfoundland and New Brunswick, and I imagine in Northern Ontario as well, it seems *everyone* has a horror story about hitting a moose.  I don't think they even make Hum-V's strong enough to withstand that sort of impact.

Better the deer than you, Marcus.  I hope your insurance covers it, but even if it doesn't, better the deer than you.

[Johan]

this is what Nasse's animal will do to your car at low speeds...they are so tall, the front of your car will only hit the legs and you end up with the animal in your lap...
http://goto.glocalnet.net/edsbruk/larm2800.html


johan

[petemoore]

It's a country road, at night no-other cars around...why IS he going 35 in a 45?  
 Makes it easier to do something once you spot one...and I spotted like 7 going the one way...I took the freeway back.
 You really have to study what's in front of the car for movement...they don't give you much warning if any...it's like they appear out of the hard tarmac.
 Yupp we've inspected 'deercrinkled' Thunderbird [and other] front ends...we decided the course of action....could be...try to hit so the deer so the bulk of it hits the window support on the side instead of the center of the window...then duck...we practiced klonking nogging with two in the front seat...the driver has only his right side to duck to [the steering wheel and door block any possibility of front or  left  ducking for the driver of the car/
 driving slow through the country where the trees come close to the road isn't a bad practice...could save alot on Hosp and body shop bills...

[Marcus Dahl]

Hey, thanks for all of the responses. It sounds like allot of you have had a similar experience or know someone who had.

The deer hit in the center of the front of my, very much loved, Toyota pickup. It didn't die instantly, but it didn't live maybe a minute. We had the sheriff dept come out for an accident report. He said that he's never seen anybody hit a deer so centered.  I've never had an experience where I couldn't avoid a deer or a cow, but with the other truck coming from the other direction and so many deer I had no place to go. The thing for me was, if I was going to hit it, then I want to hit it in the center of the truck. That way the likely hood of it coming threw the windshield would be less on my truck, and I wouldn't run the risk of flipping the truck. The thing that I really dread is dealing with the insurance company.

I really just wanted to tell everybody to watch out for them cause it's that time of year. I know that there are things in life that we can't control. This is one of them for me, and let me tell you I was trying to control it. Thanks for the kind words and thoughts.