On Friday night, heading south on US 340 out of Front Royal, still in town where the four stoplights are, we were in traffic with about six cars moving from light to light. Suddenly, a herd of deer, at least three, lept into the road at a full gallop from the left, somehow slipping between the car in front of us and us.
I'm pretty sure the deer was dead on impact, I doubt I had come down much from the 40mph you do through there before impact, and from these dents it's clear I hit a clean broadside from chest to rump. That's hair in the cracked lenses of my headlight - fortunately not much else on the car to mark what happened...
The other two deer made it through to the other side, even missing the traffic in the other lane. It could have been a real mess there - wildlife and cars don't mix well.
So keep an eye out - the deer are on the move.
3 comments:
A Deer Trys To Tackle My Car Without Its Helmet On
That reminds me of a night on 211 between Sperryville and Little Washington. I was zipping along about 60 in the left lane and no other cars around. A deer popped out from the left side and slowly walked to middle of the left lane and stopped. With no cars around and a couple of seconds to react I moved over to the right hand lane and started decelerating rapidly. Then the deer started slowly walking into the right hand lane. Continuing to slow down as fast as I could I moved over onto the right hand shoulder. Like a linebacker who has a widereceiver trapped along the sidelines the deer seemed to time its walk such that it was just able to extend its head and neck over my hood for the perfect sideline tackle. A loud thunk happened as the deers head and neck bounced off the drivers windshield post. Except for the drivers side mirror being snapped off and hanging from its electric wires there was no damage to my car.
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After the collision I looked for the deer but could not find it. With the force and sound of the deer's head bouncing off my windshield post I can not imagine that it lived. If it had been wearing a helmet it may have had a chance. I remember a voice screaming in my head "Stupid deer what are you doing just stop and your safe!" Oh well, I assume that after another hundred generations the deer will have been selected for avoiding appraoaching cars not jumping in front of them.
Sounds like you're lucky you weren't hurt in this one. I also have a couple of near misses where deer were in the road and instead of moving away from the car, they moved closer or into its path.
Natural selection needs to get on with it - especially with so many of them around these days!
Damage estimate = $1,700. No deductible on this.
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