Police Cruiser Hits Deer
December 3, 2003 9:30 AM Subscribe

Ever wonder what it's like? Do you hit the brakes, swerve left, swerve right? If it's never happened to you, take a look at this and see just how fast it all happens. Talk about "in the blink of an eye".... WOW.
(.wmv file... and possibly not safe for the squeemish.)
posted by Witty (80 comments total)

I don't have to wonder. Yeah, it happens quickly. 10 years ago. Came from the other side of the divided highway. They fed on the side of the road, so I looked out for them. I can still see the eyes looking at me. My life didn't flash before me. But I did recall thinking "So this is how I die." .. kind of calm and bemused. The deer hit the windshield and went over the car. I just got a bunch of glass hitting me. Some in my eye, in my socks, my pockets. It happens fast.
posted by Mondo at 9:40 AM on December 3, 2003

Cool the engines?

Cool the engines?

I would have picked Amanda, for sure.
posted by jon_kill at 9:40 AM on December 3, 2003

wtf's with the background rock and roll music? Am I supposed to dance?
posted by tiamat at 9:42 AM on December 3, 2003

I hit a large deer a couple of months ago, in daylight. I was going about 35/40 before I braked/skidded and attempted to steer away from it, going quite slow by then. It ran in the direction I was steering, and I hit it. It bounced off the bumper, onto the bonnet, slid across the bonnet and up and over the windscreen, onto the roof of the car, then fell back into the road by my driver's door, picked itself up and ran away. I figured it was running towards the two young ones on the other side of the road. I remember seeing the brown/beige/white fur compressed against the glass of the windscreen. It left a long trail of drool over the windows that was hard to wash off.

The whole thing scared the crap out of me, but if it had come through the windscreen it would have scared even more crap out of me and also the dog, who was sitting on the back seat, and who would probably have started to look at deer in a whole new light.
posted by carter at 9:48 AM on December 3, 2003

The tone of this video is really stupid. The slow motion, the music; this post is about 3/8" away from Fark. "Cop car hits deer. Cool!"
posted by jeremias at 9:54 AM on December 3, 2003

I've got no sound here... I'm assuming there is more to this than just the same shot over and over...

I flattened a muntjak about five years ago. they're small little buggers, but when you hit one at 90mph it gets interesting. Front end broke and I recovered it, but the back end broke recovered that and then had the front go again. By the time I stopped I'd left an incredible set of marks down the motorway.

the front bumper was never the same, but it fared batter than the deer did...
posted by twine42 at 9:59 AM on December 3, 2003

I grew up near a small farm in rural NC. Our neighbors cows would sometimes get out and wander up, down, and in the road.

One morning one cow was out for a leisurely stroll in traffic when a small british roadster happened by with a driver who wasn't paying attention. The two met. The cow survived. The car didn't.

Messy.

(I've also heard stories from friends further north of people who run into moose and elk. How the hell do you run into a fricken MOOSE?)
posted by jammer at 9:59 AM on December 3, 2003

Where I grew up in the mountains of VA, 1 in 4 car accidents are caused by deer. I personally can't count on both my hands the number of deer that I have hit or have been in a car when they were hit. The white tail deer is one of the dumbest animals ever. One time I was at a dead stop honking at a bunch of deer in the road when one came running out of the bushes and broadsided the drivers side door. We weren't even moving. I've also had to go shoot deer that had been hit but weren't quite dead yet.
Anyway, that's how I became a supporter of the deer hunt. If you're going to eliminate all the natural predators, somebody has got to kill them.
posted by trbrts at 10:00 AM on December 3, 2003

I've seen pictures of a man who hit a buck while driving a car which was just high enough to take the deer out at the knees, sending it sliding over the hood and into the passenger compartment with him. It wasn't dead, and it was VERY unhappy. An injured, frightened deer with sharp hooves and pointy antlers can do a heck of a lot of damage to a person in an enclosed space.

But the music and stuff in this video is just creepy.
posted by biscotti at 10:03 AM on December 3, 2003

tiamat - "Am I supposed to dance?"

I just don't know. ;)
posted by notsnot at 10:04 AM on December 3, 2003

Am I supposed to dance?

Yes (wav)
posted by stbalbach at 10:06 AM on December 3, 2003

The cruizer was responding to a call (with lights flashing) which means he/she was exceeding the speed limit. On rural, developed highway roads, a recent insurance commission study found the average speed of police vehicles responding to calls was always in excess of 100 mph.

At that speed, anything happens fast, including dancing while listening to cool your engines...
posted by omidius at 10:23 AM on December 3, 2003

Been there, done that. Twice. Sucks every time. It's one of the perks of driving a lot and living in the semi-rural midwest.
posted by moonbiter at 10:28 AM on December 3, 2003

Yikes. I usually see critters in time to avoid them, and have never hit anything big enough to do anything but squish under the tires. But Mondo's comment about glass in the eyes reminds me of something I read by personal protection expert Massad Ayoob: he said that he and his family always wear impact-resistant sunglasses or safety glasses in the car, since mishaps tend to involve window glass flying everywhere.
posted by Tubes at 10:33 AM on December 3, 2003

You can hit a moose if it runs out in front of you, the same as deer. I hear that up north they habitually wander out on the road and through towns (think opening credits of Nothern Exposure). They can be testy and if they happen to be standing in the road when you come driving up, they will not move for anyone or anything, and since they weigh about 1500 pounds, no one tries to make them. They'll attack vehicles and trash them if they happen to feel like it.
posted by orange swan at 10:37 AM on December 3, 2003

For a minute I thought this post was about jonmc and the anti-war protesters.
posted by PigAlien at 10:46 AM on December 3, 2003

I've hit several deer (and other wildlife) with cars. And once, the deer hit me - the dang thing ran into my driver front fender while I was driving down the road. If I hadn't slowed down, it might have missed me. They are stupid, and seem to want to run with the car, rather than away from it.

But the worst wildlife damage I ever had was when I hit a pheasant. It was 25 below zero outside, and this pheasant flew out of the ditch and smacked my windshield. The windshield crazed, and a hole was punched roughly in the center. The rear view mirror, lots of feathers, and a bunch of glass hit me in the face. As it happens, the pheasant split open when it struck the windshield, and the carcass went flying behind the car, but its innards streaked across the inside roof of the car and splatted rather dramatically against the inside of the back window.

I have pictures.

When I pulled over at the next exit, I got strange looks, what with being covered with glass, blood, feathers, and pheasant shit. No pictures of that, though.
posted by yesster at 10:52 AM on December 3, 2003

(think opening credits of Nothern Exposure).

I loved that show.
posted by goethean at 11:02 AM on December 3, 2003

It's not just in rural areas where you have to watch out. I came really close to hitting one at about 3:00 in the morning on I-66 in Northern VA. I found out what "like a deer in headlights" means, but luckily was able to avoid it since there wasn't any other traffic restricting my movement.
posted by callmejay at 11:05 AM on December 3, 2003

[Moose] can be testy and if they happen to be standing in the road when you come driving up, they will not move for anyone or anything.

Part of learning to drive in Maine is the lecture about what to do if a moose blocks the road. You bring the car to a complete stop and, if it's night, shut off the headlights.

Usually, they'll investigate from a few feet away and then stroll off. But an angry moose will kick in your front end and might even do a dance with his front hooves on your hood. I use "his," but it's most likely to be a female (cow) moose with a calf. Word is that they especially hate cars with Mass and New York plates.
posted by Mayor Curley at 11:07 AM on December 3, 2003

How the hell do you run into a fricken MOOSE?

Well...I know in the UAE (and I guess other desert lands) that expats and locals have driven into camels...and they can kill, you hit the legs and the body falls ONTO the car...

Now...how the hell do you run into a frickin CAMEL?
posted by mattr at 11:08 AM on December 3, 2003

In response to the moose question: yes, it's quite easy to hit one. They are a great big target.

While spending time in Alaska one summer, my uncle and I were driving North out of Anchorage when my uncle spotted a moose running along the side of the road. He told me to slow down, slow WAY down, and sure enough the moose turned right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and caught the tail end of him (no pun intended).

The remarkable thing is that I was in a full-size van and couldn't see over his body. Things grow large in Alaska.

Anyhoo...moose strikes can be very deadly. Essentially, when the moose gets hit, the legs get knocked out from underneath, the body enters the passenger area through the windshield, and that's all she wrote.
posted by grefo at 11:16 AM on December 3, 2003

I almost hit a deer this summer. It was surreal. The deer came up out of the ditch, I calmly steered behind it, it ran forward, the backend missed the driver's fender by inches, we continued on our merry way. It was far more like playing a video game than real life. "Oh, this could be interesting" is the only thought that ran through my mind.

Horrorstory: Guy on a motorcycle hit a moose. Managed to nail it right behind the ribs, and just in front of the hips. The bike went under the moose, the windshield eviscerating it.

The rider wiped out and came conscious in guts. Lots and lots of guts. He was unharmed.

But I'll bet his first thoughts were "Ohmigod, my guts! They're all over the place! My god... there's so much! How'd it ever fit inside?"
posted by five fresh fish at 11:17 AM on December 3, 2003

My life didn't flash before me. But I did recall thinking "So this is how I die." .. kind of calm and bemused.

Off topic but... This summer while tubing I was pulled under water, and under a rock, by a very strong river current and and had a very similar calm and bemused thought along the lines of, "You know, if you don't manage to pull yourself out from under this rock right now, you're actually going to die in a tubing mishap..." It was all very graceful and surreal.

I've come within what seemed like inches of hitting deer, but have never actually made contact. *knock wood* And to lend weight to the statement that it's not just rural areas where you need to watch for deer, when I lived in downtown Boulder, CO off Broadway, we used to get deer strolling through our backyard and once on our front porch all the time.
posted by jennyb at 11:18 AM on December 3, 2003

the only thing i remember from drivers ed is that if you hit a deer, grotesque as it is, it would be a good idea to hit the gas, giving the deer enough momentum to go over the top of the vehicle, therefore keeping it from landing on your windshield and kicking the shit out of you.
posted by sugarfish at 11:19 AM on December 3, 2003

About 9 years ago I was going 55 mph when I hit a deer. I guess I must have skidded at least 200-300 feet before I came to a complete stop. What surprised me was that the deer's carcass ended up about another 150 - 200 feet further up the road. That's a long time airborne for a creature of that size.

(and yes, the van was totalled. Fortunately, no two-legged cretures were harmed during this experiment on the effects of kinetic energy.)
posted by tdismukes at 11:24 AM on December 3, 2003

A deer hit us or we hit him...happened so fast I don't know for sure...on I-75 just outside of Holly, Michigan. Not really a rural area anymore. It was around 2AM, we were heading home, I was in the passenger seat and glanced away from the road for one second when there was an almight THUMP. Even with my seatbelt on, it threw me around in my seat. I asked my husband "did you hit a curb or something?" He pulled over, shaking. "All I saw was a brown butt..." was all he could say for a few minutes.

Apparently a deer dashed across in front of us. My husband said it came from the left (his side), but all the damage was on the right front passenger side. There was no sign of the deer by the road, and I was terrified that he was wandering around, injured and suffering. We pulled off at the next exit and called the state police. We waited for about an hour while they searched the area, but they couldn't find the deer, either.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:26 AM on December 3, 2003

If you live long enough two things will happen:

You will win every argument you ever had.

You will hit a dear.
posted by victors at 11:27 AM on December 3, 2003

And to add to the moose-bashing, they're really easy to hit because...

1. Their dark coats blend into the background.

2. Moose's eyes don't reflect light the way deer's eyes do.

3. Their bodies are generally above the headlight beams on the average car.

4. They're stupid.

And as Mayor Curley said, Maine moose don't like folks from away.
posted by SteveInMaine at 11:38 AM on December 3, 2003

Painful memories.

I had left my (ex)wife and was staying in DC with a buddy, hiking the Appalacian Trail. I was driving back to Illinois for a long weekend and to sort out belongings one weekend. I was so broke I only had change for tolls and a credit card for gas. No money in checking account, no savings, no credit cards. I was driving through northern Indiana at 2:30 in the morning, fully awake, not even speeding. All I remember is seeing half a deer - she came out of the dark from the other side of the road, and was running fast, so I didn't know she was there until impact.

Driving and singing one second, and that horrible sound the next.

A trucker found me on the side of the road, sobbing because it was the only thing I had killed. My car was totalled and had to be towed 4 hours into Chicago, where my ex's father loaned me the money to pay for the tow.

One thing I found odd - the trooper who arrived to help saw the damage and blood on my car, but still looked for the body to verify it was a deer I hit, and not some(one) else.
posted by tr33hggr at 11:40 AM on December 3, 2003

Some photographs of moose at night.
posted by SteveInMaine at 11:43 AM on December 3, 2003

(I've also heard stories from friends further north of people who run into moose and elk. How the hell do you run into a fricken MOOSE?)

As others here have said, its super easy, if the Moose is intent on getting you out of its way. I've seen them charge moving cars, and they also seem to like to stand on dark roads just as you drive over the crest of a hill. Moose are especially active at dawn and dusk, when its hardest to see them. Came very close to hitting one this way once.

My college roommate's father was a warden in the very rural town of Greenville, Maine. Her favorite "I hit a moose" story was the man who drove into the game station with a dented bumper (but otherwise unharmed pickup) and a dead moose in the bed of the truck. Seems he hit the thing head-on, broke its neck, and it slid up over the cab of the truck and landed, dead, in the bed.

Of course, the flip side of that story is the parent of another friend of mine whose mother was bitten by an angry, bleeding deer, several times. They hit the deer, and it crashed headfirst through the windshield and into the car - trapping both the driver and the passenger in the process. Few things worse in life than being trapped in a small space with an angry, wounded deer, I'd say.

Teacher Killed When Car Strikes Moose
Moose on Maine Roads (includes photo)
It's not the moose's fault we keep running into them
Maine DOT Moose-Vehicle Collisions Fact Sheet (.pdf)
posted by anastasiav at 11:49 AM on December 3, 2003

I am now officially afraid to drive in the dark in Maine.
posted by JanetLand at 11:58 AM on December 3, 2003

I knew a guy that nearly hit a raccoon on a 400-series highway around here. When something jumps in front of you at that speed, I guess instinct takes over -- he swirved the car, and went right into the guard-rail. The car was totaled. (No word on the status of the raccoon).

The moral of the story is: when dealing with animals smaller than you, it's better them than you. With animals like that, it's often safer to just hit them and clean the mess up later than it is trying to avoid them.
posted by mkn at 12:01 PM on December 3, 2003

moose strikes can be very deadly

My sister was stricken by a moose once...

I almost nailed a young doe on the Olympic Peninsula. Managed to swerve right in front of her; she visibly flinched back from the passing car.
posted by kindall at 12:15 PM on December 3, 2003

Then there are the stories (though I can't find a link right now) about the chuckleheads that go out of their way to hit a deer with their cars, at times driving off the road through fields.

The reason for this is if you hit a deer you get to keep the meat.
posted by SteveInMaine at 12:21 PM on December 3, 2003

A FOAF got killed by a moose he hit on the road a few years back. He hit the moose, the moose went through the windshield and landed on his lap. Then the moose kicked him to death.

Not a pleasant way to go.
posted by L. Ron McKenzie at 12:44 PM on December 3, 2003

While I haven't been in a car fight with a moose, I have come close a fair number of times. My husband hit one once, and the cow completely totaled his Jeep. Thankfully he was okay. Only up here in Alaska, you don't get to keep the meat... it goes to the local Food Bank for feeding the hungry.
posted by rhapsodie at 12:46 PM on December 3, 2003

I hit a moose once in New Hampshire. It happened as suddenly as in that video. Too quick to really scare me until about an hour later when I realized how lucky I was to be alive. Totalled my 4x4 truck and fed some weird local guy's family for a year.
posted by bondcliff at 12:55 PM on December 3, 2003

The rider wiped out and came conscious in guts.

And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!
posted by majcher at 12:55 PM on December 3, 2003

Deer, Moose, Camel.... pfeh. Trifles.

*I* nailed a SKUNK one night on I-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Little bastard just... appeared... right in front of my truck. I felt just sick inside about it, until I happened to take a breath...

I mean, all that hitting one of those larger quadrupeds can do is total your vehicle or maybe kill you - in which case your suffering is over. But GODDAMNIT skunk spray is evil stuff! My truck reeked for weeks! (I *think* the smell faded away after that, but it is possible my odor receptors just gave up and died in self defense.)
posted by John Smallberries at 1:15 PM on December 3, 2003

It's really really horrible of me to say this, but some of these stories are bloody hilarious... The unpleasant pheasant one stands out...
posted by dazed_one at 1:22 PM on December 3, 2003

Have come close, but never hit anything myself. Most impressive thing I think I've ever seen was a neighbor who hit a goose or crane, I believe. Right on the windshield. It bowed the entired thing in about a foot, and there was glass everywhere. He was driving home looking out the windshield, because the glass was completely opaque.
posted by stoneegg21 at 2:13 PM on December 3, 2003

Looking out the window, not the windshield. Oops.
posted by stoneegg21 at 2:14 PM on December 3, 2003

I've come very close a couple times, living in an area that's just on the edge of town, with a lot of farmland around me, so I tend to see deer fairly often. Even being carefull, sometimes there' just not much you can do.

And in general, sick as it might sound, swerving is probably the worst possible idea to do. In the grand scheme of things, it's better to hit the deer than it is to hit the tree at the side of the road. The deer gives, the tree doesn't.
posted by piper28 at 2:22 PM on December 3, 2003

moose are built like tanks. when i was a wee one, my dad crashed his yellow pickup into one when it ran out onto one of the highways in northwestern ontario. the entire front of the pickup was wrapped around the moose's legs, but the moose was apparently able to walk away by himself. my dad ended up in a coma for a few weeks from the injuries.

otherwise, wild animals on the road are fairly standard on either the bush roads or highway 11-17 around thunder bay. my dad drove a truck into a goose during a blizzard as it was somehow stuck on the road and damaged one of the headlights. a family friend ran over a red fox on the road. he pulled over, took a hammer from his toolbox and quickly put the loudly-in-pain mammal out of his misery. another family friend took a bend in the road fast in his sports car and drove straight into a sleeping bear. he watched the bear launch into the sky through the sunroof and eventually land behind the car after it swerved to break. naturally, the bear shook his head a few times and ran back into the woods pronto.

the finns up in northwestern ontario take a strange approach to animals on the road: if a vehicle manages to kill an animal that walks in front of said vehicle whilst in motion on the pavement, the ministry of natural resources will allow the driver to claim the carcass as a legitimate kill, even during the hunting off-season. in some ways, it's ingrained to the transplanted finn to go full tilt towards an animal on the road, just to get some meat for the freezer. personally, the entire thing's barbaric to me.

so far, the only animal i've hit is a mother raccoon close to ottawa (there were two tinier ones scampering ahead; i couldn't brake in time). however, the probability's always high, especially nowadays around my house, as my parents have taken to feeding the whitetailed deer that use the backyard as their own personal highway through the diminishing woods west of thunder bay.
posted by myopicman at 2:47 PM on December 3, 2003

I knew a guy that nearly hit a raccoon on a 400-series highway around here. When something jumps in front of you at that speed, I guess instinct takes over -- he swirved the car, and went right into the guard-rail. The car was totaled. (No word on the status of the raccoon).

And in general, sick as it might sound, swerving is probably the worst possible idea to do.

Well there you go. I've known people to roll over cars when swerving to miss a rabbit. Imagine the problem if the deputy in the clip had swerved his car at the speed he was traveling. Blood everywhere indeed.
posted by Elvis at 2:52 PM on December 3, 2003

Reminds me of a .wav clip that was making the rounds a few years ago - a guy had hit a deer, got out and put the deer in the back of his car. Turned out the deer wasn't dead and he ended up needing a "bambulance" because the deer bit him. It happened in front of the "stop and go" store. Anybody remember the clip, and know where to find it?

I remember that, too, but I'm old-school: I remember it circulating on audio back in the pre-internet days. Snopes doesn't seem to think it's real, although the one I heard sounded pretty real. Although I was like 14 at the time.
posted by COBRA! at 2:57 PM on December 3, 2003

Here's the clip.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:14 PM on December 3, 2003

"How the hell do you run into a fricken MOOSE?"

As others have pointed out, moose are practically designed to be hit. They are also one of the most dangerous animals alive - according to this WikiPedia article on Alces Alces, female moose kill more people in Canada than any other animal - doesn't say if that includes traffic incidents, though.

But with the typical male specimen weighing over 550 kg, and the largest recorded standing 2.34 metres tall and weighing 816 kg, it's easy to imagine what will happen if you hit one. Few live to tell the tale.

When someone says that "the moose was as big as a horse", they're actually not exaggerating - most moose are bigger than horses, which you'll notice if you ever find yourself close to one.

They also have an attitude like no other animal - their only natural predator when fully grown are wolves, so unless you have a pack of wolves handy, a moose won't give a flying sh*t about you.

Meanwhile, Norwegian officials warn people to stay away from drunken moose.
posted by spazzm at 3:38 PM on December 3, 2003

Now you all know why us Canucks are so tough. It's those vicious moose, which would have killed us all by now if it weren't for our tough Canadian nature.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:04 PM on December 3, 2003

I've hit three deer. The worst one was on a two lane road at about midnight, deer runs in front of me from the left, sees my car and does a 180, then sees the car coming the other way, does a 180, etc, right up the point where I hit the deer, driving it into the oncoming cars front left fender, which drove it into my left front fender and door, which then drove it into her left doors, which drove it into my rear quarter.

Pulled over, ran the 1/4 mile down to where the other driver stopped(ostensibly to check if they were OK, in actuality to thank them for not swerving into me to avoid hitting a deer), returned to drag the deer off the road, grabbed the rear legs, look at ditch to see where I'm dragging it, think "pretty light deer", then look back, because I just knew. Yep, only the back half of the deer is being dragged, front half still sitting in the road. It actually took three trips, since the head detached as I dragged the front half off to the side.

Daughter hit one doing 75 at midnight 20 miles south of Atlanta. The trucker behind them said he was very impressed by the way she slowed down carefully, pulled to the side of the road, and then turned on her emergency flashers, after the big fat doe bounced off the windshield, the roof, and then the trunk, airbags deployed and everything. He didn't realize that she did all that while screaming at the top of her lungs and freaking out.

The strangest was what I referred to as The Night Of The Possums. Driving on another two lane road at night over the course of around 120 miles I must have hit 4 possums, and was able to avoid an equal number. Must have been driven loco by mating frenzy or something, but they were all over the road.

Since I have to make these 120 mile runs at night in rural areas, and animals apparently are drawn to my vehicles, I now drive an F-150. The last deer I hit was with it, and it lines up grill to torso perfectly, and just sends them flying(as opposed to tumbling through my windshield).
posted by dglynn at 4:13 PM on December 3, 2003

Moose sausage is a delectable treat.
posted by The God Complex at 4:15 PM on December 3, 2003

Finally somewhere relevant to post this (non-gory) picture of my car after a deer hit: deerhit.jpg

That's what happens when you hit a leaping deer while driving 65 mph in the fast lane on an interstate. Luckily roofs can absorb a lot of shock as they crumple completely. Even more luckily, I didn't have a passenger, and I was fine. Unluckily, they didn't total the car -- apparently it was still worth replacing the entire roof.
posted by smackfu at 4:21 PM on December 3, 2003

Many years ago, the sister of a friend of mine was killed when someone swerved to miss a dog on the road, lost control and wiped out the two of them who were walking on the footpath beside the road. It is almost impossible to make rational decisions like this in the milliseconds you have, but you should never swerve for any animal that is small enough to come off second-best if you collide. Survival of the fittest and all that.

Deer are not so much of a problem here as Kangaroos are and they can be a real hazard at dusk. What makes it worse is that, if they find themselves in the headlights of a car, they will turn and try to get away from them, so will try and outrun the car. This problem is serious enough that Holden has a program specifically designed to make cars more able to survive impact with them. Cows can also be a problem in rural areas, where they are sometimes let out to graze in the "long paddock" at night. They are dark, unfazed by fast-moving objects and very very solid.
posted by dg at 4:27 PM on December 3, 2003

In my driver's ed class, in high school, we were repeatedly and firmly admonished to never swerve or slam on the brakes to miss any animal.

This was taken to such an extreme that when a classmate hit the brakes on a neighborhood street to miss hitting a poodle she was promptly failed, even though she couldn't have been going more than 20 miles an hour.

That I'll disagree with. In a residential neighborhood, you should brake hard (but retain control and NOT swerve!!!) for a loose dog, since there's a decent chance that a child is chasing it.

But in general, drivers should be in the habit of not swerving (or panic-braking) for animals jumping out into the road, since most of them will be small enough to be tire-fodder anyhow.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:41 PM on December 3, 2003

i thought everyone hit deer. just, you know, naturally. i've personally hit three. or rather, as it happens more often than not, been hit by. the best one was after playing A&A till 5am at a friends house. riding home with my brother on a back-of-hand familiar type rual county roads we were probably going 85ish. i remember opening my eyes and seeing it happen, all slowlike. worked about how i'd imagine having the front tire shot out.

better then that was a good friend and i staying at a woman's house in colorado. she had a 4-wheeler, and my friend, a three hundred pound man, decided to take it out one evening. driving along the top of almost sheer cliff, he was nailed in the chest by a full grown doe. he and bike fly over the crest and roll about 100 feet till they're stopped by some trees. luckily his pride was the only thing injured, and he was the lucky winner of a deer face imprint painted in mud on his sweater. i have a picture somewhere...
posted by kid_twist at 5:04 PM on December 3, 2003

I was in north dakota last fall, driving down I41 at around dusk, with three other people in the car, when I hit a blue whale. We were all basically unharmed, but it took us a few hours to dig ourselves out, and another few days to dig our way back in and find the car. Car still works fine, but no matter how many air fresheners I put in there, it just doesn't smell right. Turned me off sushi for a few days too.
posted by duckstab at 5:16 PM on December 3, 2003

It's really really horrible of me to say this, but some of these stories are bloody hilarious...

me too, i feel guilty at the amount of times i've burst out in laughter reading this thread.
posted by joedan at 5:25 PM on December 3, 2003

As a motorcycle rider, I live in mortal fear of deer, moose, bears, cows, all other vehicles, and partridge.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:33 PM on December 3, 2003

A deer hit us or we hit him...happened so fast I don't know for sure...on I-75 just outside of Holly, Michigan.

I used to live in that area of Michigan, and I had friends who lived near that particular stretch of I-75, and there were deer all over the place. I once counted 13 or 14 along one stretch of road. One drove *very* slowly through there.

Our house was actually right next to I-75, but a bit further south--right before the Pine Knob/DTE Energy Music Theatre exit (we could sometimes hear the concerts in the summer), and we'd often see deer cross the interstate and into our back yard. Never saw one get hit, amazingly enough.
posted by eilatan at 7:08 PM on December 3, 2003

As a motorcycle rider, I live in mortal fear of ..., and partridge.
As you should. A friend of mine hit a pigeon many years ago at around 160 Km/h and it went straight through the metal grill, punched a hole clean through the radiator and exploded on the cooling fan, leaving the blades of the fan bent back against the engine. The engine bay looked like someone had put a bird through a blender with the lid off.
posted by dg at 7:14 PM on December 3, 2003

Beetles aren't all that fun, either. I wear a full-face helmet and body armour. I've been hit in the arm by large beetles and it smarts like mad; I've been hit in the face shield and it's like a cannon going off; and I've been hit in the neck by small bugs and it stings. I'm not looking forward to the day I get hit in the neck by a large beetle, nor the day I've got the face shield up and take a bug in the face.

Knew a fellow who was hit by a snowy owl. It was presumably after something on the road, and got in the wrong spot (the front fender) at the wrong time. The fender was trashed and the wheel was damn near ripped off the car. He kept one of the owl's feet. The talons were freaking huge -- I had no idea owls could be so damn large. We're talking talons the size of a large man's fingers, and a claw-spread that could easily make off with one's face.

My father hit a St. Bernard once. It came ripping out from behind a snowbank, took a chomp at the front tire, got its head caught in the wheel well, its body came swinging back and slammed into the car so hard it wrecked the door, and then had its head run over by the rear tire. The dog got up and walked away. The car went into the garage for repairs of all sorts. Head like a cement brick, those dogs.

There was another car-chasing dog out there in the country. It loved to go for the rear wheel. Unfortunately for it, it failed to notice the 30' trailer that was being towed behind. When it left off the chase, it got smoked by the trailer. Off to doggy heaven for that varmi't.

Knock on wood, the worst I've ever run over was a snake. It was out on a nice logging road, coming back from a hike. Dappled sunlight, etcetera. Thought it was a stick until it was too late. I felt so, so bad for the thing.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:26 PM on December 3, 2003

I don't get many opportunities to say this but while living in Alaska my friends and I hit a moose at 70 MPH and lived to tell about it. Never saw it coming. The damn thing nearly ripped open the Saab 900 we were driving in.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:39 PM on December 3, 2003

spazzm: They also have an attitude like no other animal - their only natural predator when fully grown are wolves, so unless you have a pack of wolves handy, a moose won't give a flying sh*t about you.

You know what? Even a pack of wolves might not help. When I was young, my family lived in Alaska and our next door neighbor raised huskies. One night at about 3 in the morning we were awakened by a huge racket coming from the dog pen, where a moose had somehow managed to become entangled in the fencing. I still remember standing on our front porch seeing the flashing lights from police and fire department vehicles, and about 30 people standing around trying to figure out how to extract the moose from the fence. It's astonishing to me that the moose would have chosen to go anywhere near a pack of dogs, but there you go...
posted by taz at 8:41 PM on December 3, 2003

My sister was stricken by a moose once...

No realli! She was Karving her initals on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush ....

(Sorry, some comments absolutely require that you quote Monty Python. In fact, it may very well be the law. )
posted by dejah420 at 8:42 PM on December 3, 2003

Failure of Sweden's infamous Moose Test (a double-lane avoidance swerve at speed) sent the Mercedes A-Class into a redesign (though it seems an invention of journalists rather than the government; my cousin, then a Stockholm taxi driver, claimed it was a driver's license requirement, but I'm skeptical of that as well). There's another Moose Crash Test involving a dummy elk (made from car tires) that was invented by Saab; now you know why Swedish cars are so safe.
posted by dhartung at 9:41 PM on December 3, 2003

Throughout BC's Rocky Mountain section of the Trans-Canada Highway are signposts with Attention Elk warnings. As with the caution slow children (and where's the sport in runninig over a slow child, I say!), I always pay special attention for attention elk.

We also have points of interest which, naturally, one must point at as one drives by.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:09 PM on December 3, 2003

I hit one once when I was fifteen, driving on a learner's permit (parent has to be riding in the passenger seat.) It was a dark, winding, two-lane road in semi-rural NC. I put on my high-beams right as a doe leapt out from beside my car. I was going 60 and had no chance of avoiding it.

I heard a terrific bang and all of a sudden I was grappling for control of the car. I fought it to the side of the road, then sat behind the steering wheel and hyperventilated while my mother got out and calmly assessed the damage. Was *real* lucky...one headlight out, fender driven back into the door, hood literally curled under itself from the impact, grille destroyed. But no broken glass.

Oddly enough, no sign of the deer -- other than drops of blood on the road and the big chunks of meat and fur that the body shop found when they opened the hood. I figure it probably kept going and most likely bled to death of internal injuries later.
posted by Vidiot at 11:54 PM on December 3, 2003

posted by spazzm at 12:55 AM on December 4, 2003

posted by spazzm at 1:00 AM on December 4, 2003

I once hit a 14 year old girl, while on my mountain bike doing about 20mph. Her head smashed into the right side of my jaw. Hurt like hell.

And... she looked like a moose!
posted by jiroczech at 5:19 AM on December 4, 2003

MetaFilter: about 3/8" away from Fark
posted by MrMoonPie at 9:03 AM on December 4, 2003

Beware of drunken elk.
posted by kindall at 1:53 PM on December 4, 2003

Ford Mondeo 2 - Pheasant 0
posted by Frasermoo at 3:57 AM on December 5, 2003

There are some pretty good "car hits animal" stories in this thread, but I think mine's difficult to top - it involves multiple large animals, and two cars, one of which was a police cruiser.

It started out with me driving a Mazda 626 on an unlit two lane road in far west Houston late one night. I was doing about 75 in a 35. I reached down to grab the cigarette lighter, noticed a flash in front of me, and kaboom.

The car travelled for about half a mile, with me in a panic, windows busted, hood ripped up and airbags deployed.

The nearest phone was a couple of miles back the way I had originally come. I didn't know what I had hit at this time, and I dreaded having to walk by whatever it was on my way to the phone. (I was deathly afraid that it might have been a person.)

As I walked back in the pitch black darkness, I could hear agonizing screams, and I was terrified (still in shock, too). Soon I saw them - 15-20 black cows spread out across the road and on both shoulders. In the middle of my lane lay the grown cow I had hit, screaming hellishly and writhing in agony. The other cows, seemingly oblivious, approached me as if I had some food to offer. I screamed at them and ran through the group to the other side.

Fortunately, a passerby picked me up and took me to the nearest phone, where I called my parents and the cops.

My father picked me up, and we followed a sherrif's deputy, who was speeding toward the accident scene with lights and sirens running.

As we approached the spot where the cow lay, I realized that the deputy didn't notice it, and was still running at full speed. I yelled to my dad, "he's going to hit the cow," just before he plowed into it. The entire police cruiser flew 3 feet of off the ground and landed in a flash of sparks.

In the end, the police officer had to go to the hospital (thankfully with minor injuries), the Mazda and the police cruiser were totalled and the police found a second cow that I had hit and thrown 20 feet to the right of the road (they shot the second cow while the paramedics were checking me out in the back of an ambulance).

The first cow had come up onto my hood, partially into my windshield (completely busting it), up onto the roof, and had made a dent in the trunk on its way back to the ground.
posted by syzygy at 4:38 AM on December 5, 2003

Moose hazard tips:

Tip #4 If hitting one is unavoidable (and I know this is hard to do under the stress of knowing you are going to hit but knowing can help) Hit the hind quarters on the drivers side if the moose is facing your left. Hit the hind quarters on the passenger side if the moose is facing to your right. This will spin the moose out and away from your car as the front of the moose is heavier. If you are going to hit full broad side......well all I can say is I hope you make it because they usually end up in the front seat with you as the front end of the car/truck kicks up the legs and they slide along the hood and through the windshield back first. Driver has a slightly better chance as the steering wheel might block the animal.

posted by moonbiter at 4:11 PM on December 8, 2003

If you drive a small sports car, like I do, you will find that you can often just pass right underneath the moose without even touching it. Very thrilling, that.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:22 PM on December 8, 2003

« Older Metafilter as a screenplay.... | Animal, Vegetable, Video... Newer »

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

Police Cruiser Hits Deer December 3, 2003 9:30 AM Subscribe

Police Cruiser Hits Deer
December 3, 2003 9:30 AM Subscribe