Avoiding a Collision with a Deer

Fall and spring are active seasons for both pleasure driving and wandering deer. Put them together and you have a costly accident.

Many people don’t realize how much damage
can be done to a car if it hits a deer. Drivers need to be particularly cautious of deer foraging near roadsides and the Fall season’s shortened daylight — it’s a very dangerous combination. Unfortunately, more drivers are on the road at the very times when deer are most active — dawn and dusk. An adult deer can weigh more than 200 pounds and a car striking one can not only incur thousands of dollars in damage, but can cause the car to veer off the road. Reports indicate that hundred of thousands of deer are hit by cars each year in this country.

Here are a few basic cautions for drivers:

• Visually scan a wide swath of the roadside.
• Slow down when approaching a deer standing near the side of a road and be prepared. If startled, it can bolt onto the roadway and into your path. If necessary, honk your horn and flash your lights to try to scare the deer.
• Deer Crossing signs are there because it has been determined that this is an area they use to congregate and migrate. Take the signs seriously particularly those installed specifically for this time of year.
• Be cautious in wooded and agricultural areas where there is little distance between the road and the woods.
• Deer whistles or ultrasonic deer avoidance systems attached to vehicles have never been proven to work by independent studies and may give drivers a false sense of security.
• Be particularly careful at dawn and dusk and when driving either over a hill or around a curve, where visibility is limited. Use your high beams to give you a greater area of visibility and allow you to see the deer’s eyes sooner.
• Be alert for more deer than you may see at that moment. Where there is one deer, there are often more nearby.
• In many instances, it is best not to swerve around the deer since the deer may move in the same direction. You may also inadvertently hit another vehicle, or go off onto a dangerous shoulder. Unless certain of those road factors, it is often best to simply brake and continue in your lane of traffic.