Deer Crossing, as in RIGHT NOW

March 28, 2023 10:51 AM

Is there anything like "best practice" for when an enormous animal leaps onto an Interstate in your immediate vicinity while driving?

I just had my closest call ever with livestock about a week and a half ago, a good-sized buck. I only saw him jump at the last second and honestly though he was going to T-bone me, but I saw his legs go past my bumper-mounted rearview camera and I do not know what happened after that. It was decently dense traffic, speed limit 80/70 for trucks, there was a semi behind me with reasonable distance but I did know in the half-second I had to think that I absolutely should NOT brake hard, whatever else happened.

After the adrenaline faded, I started thinking of all the various ways that could have gone down. I hit the deer, deer hit me, or the possibility that someone in front of me hits the deer and THEN it becomes my immediate problem.

For our particular use case, vehicle is a big white cargo van with no side windows, but I drive regular passenger cars sometimes as well.

posted by Lyn Never to Travel & Transportation (25 answers total)

I've known two people who have died from rural encounters with whitetail deer. Both hit trees trying to avoid hitting deer. My advice, and what I try to do, is to hit the deer. I brake but do not swerve. I've hit 4 or 5 in my life and lost 3 hoods and quarter panels, but no injuries. These were all 50-60 mph or less.

But a deer is a lot different than, say, a moose. A moose landing on you can easily kill you, and is the chief way moose cause human death, I've heard. But there's no moose where I am.

Cows, I'm not sure. Cows don't move as fast, so they're less likely to jump out, you know?
posted by AbelMelveny at 10:56 AM on March 28, 2023 [14 favorites]

My rule is Never Swerve for deer, elk, and smaller animals. It’s not that hitting them head on is safer. Obviously it’s not. It’s that you’ve got a really good chance of only incurring lesser damage if you keep to a predictable path and let them do their thing. Swerving introduces all kinds of additional chaos and can get you killed all on its own. It takes a lot of discipline to not swerve though.

This doesn’t apply to moose, bears, or cows.
posted by HotToddy at 11:08 AM on March 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

Never swerve. Brake if you can and you are clear behind. If not just let the car deal with the consequences - it is better at it than you are. Look at the emergency lane and where to stop before impact (if you can) and start braking gently if you have traffic behind you as you may have limited vision after it hits your car so need to know if it is a nice smooth emergency lane or a brick wall.
posted by Brockles at 11:10 AM on March 28, 2023 [9 favorites]

How high is your car? I grew up in an area with a lot of deer and was taught that you should speed up (ugh), or brake and then take your foot off the brake just before impact, so that the front bumper rises up when you hit the animal and there's less chance of the deer going through your windshield. This may not apply if you have one of the giant modern SUVs/trucks.
posted by pinochiette at 11:21 AM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

I learned to drive in Canada, and there was a day in our driver's ed class that was basically "Wildlife are A Thing and What To Do About It" Among the lessons that I learned from that session:

1. drive slow in areas with wildlife crossings, and at night, use your highbeams
2. if an animal crosses drift (but don't swerve or hard turn) to the nearest shoulder and not the middle. You don't want to make the animal halt or backtrack, which is more likely to happen if you swerve or head for the center. A hard turn also makes you look bigger because an animal doesn't know what a car is or how the wheels indicate which direction it's going.
3. if a moose crosses, stop right now.
4. if a Canadian Goose crosses on the causeway to the Lion's Gate bridge, stop right now and wait until it finishes crossing
5. if you hit a Canadian Goose because it's blocking traffic and you're in a rush, insurance will not cover your damage.
6. elk are often parts of herds, so if you see one, slow down and get ready for more to show up.

6 happened to me once while riding a bike through Vancouver Island and I had to wait for 10 entire minutes while a train of elk crossed this four lane highway in front of me and it was the most magical moment of that summer.
posted by bl1nk at 11:27 AM on March 28, 2023 [27 favorites]

I'm glad you're ok.

I collided with a moose in 1994*. I was driving an Isuzu pickup truck doing about 50mph. It was night and I literally saw the thing a half second before I hit him. Luckily he hit the front corner of my truck, and not the middle. He was still tall enough to crush the frame above the windshield. My truck was totaled and the moose died in the middle of the road. Aside from a cut from broken windshield glass, me and my buddy were ok, just badly shaken.

This was in the days before cell phones so we had to wait for someone to approach the scene, go into town and call the police. It was maybe 30 minutes before a cop showed up. I'm really glad nobody was waiting for an ambulance.

As far as I remember, I jammed on the brakes as soon as I hit him. I'm not sure what I would have done if I had seen him first. Instinct probably would have had me slamming on the brakes. I would like to think I wouldn't have swerved, which very likely would have resulted in my truck rolling over. I have had close calls with moose before and since then (I used to spend a lot of time in northern New Hampshire) but they have always been far enough ahead of me that I was able to slow down and let them continue crossing the road.

The guy who heard the report on his police scanner who showed up to claim the meat told me I SHOULD have slowed down gently, which would have resulted in less shock to the animal and therefore more tender meat. I assure you I was not thinking about how tender the meat would be when I saw that moose.

This was right after NH stopped putting the number of moose collisions on the highway signs so I was only one of the "Hundreds of collisions" they put on the signs.

Lest you think only large animals can almost kill you, my brother once rolled his VW Bug swerving to avoid a squirrel. Never swerve for a squirrel.

So I don't know what best practices are, I think, like colliding with a car, a lot of it depends on luck. Slamming on the brakes with a semi behind you could very well be worse than having a deer fly over the hood of your car. Slow down in large mammal country and be alert. Scan the road constantly. Pay attention to wildlife crossing signs. Mostly just hope the gods are smiling on you that day.

* a woman I knew was driving in Vermont with her dad that same summer and they also hit a moose. She called me to talk about our shared experience. We have now been married for 25 years and the house we live in is festooned with various moose-themed items.
posted by bondcliff at 11:31 AM on March 28, 2023 [86 favorites]

Deer and kangaroos often cross in groups, so watch for a second or third animal after the first one.
posted by zamboni at 11:50 AM on March 28, 2023 [7 favorites]

slow down as fast as safely possible, without trying to swerve and dodge. animals in traffic are notoriously unpredictable, dashing in random directions.

i have deer on the road at least once a week.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:52 AM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

also, with deer and elk, there's almost always more of them ready to dash out from the roadside. watch it.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:53 AM on March 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

There are devices you can mount on your car that make a high pitched whistling noise that are audible to deer but humans cannot hear. My deer hunter uncles used to put them on their cars so they avoid the deer killing them crossing the road so they can kill the deer with their guns.
posted by effluvia at 12:05 PM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

In Sweden, they teach us to brake but not swerve for roe deer and smaller. For moose, fallow deer, and other animals taller than the hood of your car, you're supposed to brake and swerve toward's the animal's rear end if you can't stop.
posted by MeadowlarkMaude at 12:15 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

At night, straight road and you're all alone: kill the headlights, hit the horn and floor it.
posted by Rash at 12:19 PM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Was driving with a friend at dusk approaching a section of highway with known animal crossings.
Driver: "Can you help me look out for animals?"
Pasenger: "sure, what should I do if I see one?"
Driver: "how about you just say 'Deer' if you see anything at all, doesn't matter if it's a deer or not, OK?"
Passenger: "Deer!"
Driver: "Yes, just like that. I appreciate your..."
Passenger: "Deer! Deer! Deer! Deer! DEER!"

We did not hit the animal, but we both had a laugh.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 12:36 PM on March 28, 2023 [16 favorites]

oh yeah, my wife and I also have a system borrowed from her parents who lived in rural Michigan where the person in the passenger seat uses the prefix "Scenic (Animal)" when observing a pretty animal at the roadside and abandons the prefix when alerting the driver to a crosser.

"Oooh, Scenic Deer at 2 o'clock" = there's an interesting deer to our right if you have time to look vs. "Deer at 10!" = brake now and brace for impact on your side.
posted by bl1nk at 12:42 PM on March 28, 2023 [19 favorites]

There are devices you can mount on your car that make a high pitched whistling noise that are audible to deer but humans cannot hear.

They might be able to hear ultrasonic frequencies:

Hearing Range of White-Tailed Deer as Determined by Auditory Brainstem Response. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 71: 1238-1242. https://doi.org/10.2193/2006-326

Basic knowledge of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) hearing can improve understanding of deer behavior and may assist in the development of effective deterrent strategies. Using auditory brainstem response testing, we determined that white-tailed deer hear within the range of frequencies we tested, between 0.25–30 kilohertz (kHz), with best sensitivity between 4–8 kHz. The upper limit of human hearing lies at about 20 kHz, whereas we demonstrated that white-tailed deer detected frequencies to at least 30 kHz. This difference suggests that research on the use of ultrasonic (frequencies >20 kHz) auditory deterrents is justified as a possible means of reducing deer—human conflicts.

but many commercially available deer whistles either don't actually produce the sound they claim to, or don't produce it loud enough.

"Analysis and effectiveness of deer whistles for motor vehicles: frequencies, levels, and animal threshold responses", Acoustics Research Letters Online 4, 71-76 (2003)

Whitetail deer (Odocileus virginianus) are common across much of the United States. In areas where deer populations are prevalent, there is a propensity for interactions with automobiles. Various methods have been suggested for reducing the number of automobile-deer collisions, including acoustic devices such as deer whistles. Six different whistles were tested in the laboratory and on motor vehicles. Frequencies and intensities generated by the devices when mounted on vehicles at speeds from 30 - 45 mile per hour were determined. The primary frequency of operation of the closed end whistles on vehicles was determined to be approximately 3.3 kHz with little variation with changes in air pressure. Open-end whistles had a primary frequency of about 12 kHz, with significant variation with changes in air pressure. The best frequency range of hearing for whitetail deer appears to be between 2 and 6 kHz. The effectiveness of these devices was concluded based on the comparison of the acoustical attributes of the devices to deer hearing thresholds and acoustic behavior.

Even when you mount a noisemaker that is in their hearing range, deer don't seem to care.

"Deer Responses to Sounds From a Vehicle-Mounted Sound-Production System," Journal of Wildlife Management, 73(7), 1072-1076, (1 September 2009)

We evaluated efficacy of sound as a deterrent for reducing deer (Odocoileus spp.)–vehicle collisions by observing behavioral responses of free-ranging white-tailed deer (O. virginianus) to pure-tone sounds within their documented range of hearing. Behavior of free-ranging deer within 10 m of roadways was not altered in response to a moving automobile fitted with a sound-producing device and speakers that produced 5 sound treatments documented to be within the hearing range of white-tailed deer. Many commercially available, vehicle-mounted auditory deterrents (i.e., deer whistles) are purported to emit continuous pure-tone sounds similar to those we tested. However, our data suggest that deer whistles are likely not effective in altering deer behavior in a manner that would prevent deer–vehicle collisions.

posted by zamboni at 12:49 PM on March 28, 2023 [6 favorites]

Deer usually leap forward, if they leap.

They are unpredictable , though. In Canada, there are highways signs that announce "ATTENTION! Je suis Imprévisible!" with a cheery Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer figure on them. Check it out.

My parents hit a deer in their Subaru, and were unscathed. (Not so much the deer.) But the idea of hitting a moose scares me as much as losing control and hitting a bridge abutment: they are SO BIG, and if you take out their legs they fall on you.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:50 PM on March 28, 2023

oh, also not to threadsit, but all of this advice on how to avoid hitting animals in a car (keep a straight predictable line, slow down, make sure they can hear you) also applies to cyclists avoiding pedestrians who are jaywalking.
posted by bl1nk at 12:56 PM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]

Re: deer whistles. This is anecdotal, but the last time I hit a deer, I asked the guy doing the estimate on my car repair what he thought of them. He said he had no idea how well they worked, but he had done several estimates on cars with deer whistles that had collided with a deer. Maybe they were poorer quality or not mounted in the best position?
posted by coldhotel at 1:04 PM on March 28, 2023

"there is a propensity for interactions with automobiles" lol
posted by HotToddy at 1:07 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I had a friend get hit by a deer once...as in, the car was parked, and a deer ran across the road and directly into the side of the car. Made a dent, insurance covered it, the deer shook it off.

Don't swerve unless it's a moose, and also don't honk at anything bigger than a goose. Some animals take the honk as a challenge. I was in a car once that honked at some Roosevelt elk; some individuals took the honk personally, as a challenge, and charged the car.
posted by blnkfrnk at 2:43 PM on March 28, 2023 [3 favorites]

There's an obvious tactic to be used when sharing the road with wildlife - you should always be able to stop in the space you can see ahead of you no matter what happens. So, drive slowly enough to do so. Unfortunately, some wildlife are inconsiderately and moving fast enough at more or less right-angles to you to make such a speed ridiculously slow, so this theory is often completely impractical unless you have a week to get to the shops and back.

For smaller animals, never, ever swerve, just brake as hard as you can safely. When I was in high school, a friend was killed while walking on the footpath by a car that swerved to avoid a dog on the road, lost control and ran over her and her sister. The risks in swerving at high speed are greater than the risk in staying the course and stopping as quickly as possible. Modern cars with ABS do mean that it's possible to both brake hard and swerve to some extent, but most drivers don't have the skill to manage this unexpectedly.

For larger animals, where hitting them head-on is the greatest and most immediate risk, braking hard and steering towards the back of the animal (so away from where they are heading) is likely the best tactic but, as already mentioned, animals are unpredictable and often very capable of changing direction quickly.

Here in Australia, the biggest risk is kangaroos, which move fast, jump high and have no sense of or care for you in your car. A large one (2m tall, 90kg) can very easily write off a car. Driving at dusk is the biggest risk, so the smartest tactic is to keep your speed down, drive in the middle of the road if you can and have a spotter looking well ahead and to the sides. Some years ago I drove from Longreach to Emerald, about a four-hour trip and we counted 198 dead kangaroos along the way and 57 live ones (not much to look at out there). They get mowed down in large numbers by huge fast-moving trucks that can neither swerve nor slow down enough to avoid them, not helped by the fact that bitumen roads in that area are not black, but a pretty close match to kangaroo-red in colour.
posted by dg at 3:42 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Montanan here, with 45 years of driving ~20,000 miles a year across the state and (mostly) missing deer, elk, antelope, moose, black bears, cattle, horses, buffalo, etc.

Don't swerve is the absolute best advice. Brake hard (assuming no cars are on your tail) in a straight line and brace for impact. Swerving changes the physics of your automobile in mostly bad ways and makes it a lot harder to control. The Montana Highway Patrol has said that more people die trying to avoid wildlife than by hitting wildlife.

Cows, I'm not sure. Cows don't move as fast, so they're less likely to jump out, you know?


The base rule on cows on or along the side of the road (open range) is that the big ones mostly will not move out in front of you and the little ones (calves) always will. The scariest thing to worry about with cows is black Angus cattle on the road on a dark night. You won't see them until it's too damn late.
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:07 PM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

“brake but do not swerve” is the gold standard.
posted by amaire at 6:53 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

I drive a lot in deer-heavy areas; my husband hit a deer a couple winters ago and it totalled our (small) car, but thankfully he was ok.

As with so many things driving, the best defense is prevention. Go slow when the risk is high; that means the couple hours around dawn and twilight, as deer are crepuscular and more active then. They are also more likely to cross streets in winter to early spring. When driving in deer areas, don't speed. Reduce your speed to speed limit or even below, turn on your brights and sweep your eyes side to side to catch any motions. Also, if you have 2 lanes to travel, drive in the lane closest to center so you have more reaction time if an animal starts to cross. The best case scenario is you are driving at a speed you can control, you are not distracted, and you have plenty of time to react if a deer leaps out.

IF you see deer and fortunately don't hit them, alert other drivers coming the opposite way with some flashes of your brights.

For moose, all I have to offer is advice I got when I lived in Maine: if driving while it's dark, wait for an 18-wheeler to go by and then fall into their draft and follow so it won't be you that hits the animal.
posted by Miko at 8:44 PM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you all for your information! It is especially good information to remember that they're gonna go forward, so if there's any chance of avoiding it's to give them a chance to pass.

And I am now reminded by this thread of maybe the funniest story my mother told me as a child, when she and her sister were walking along a pitch dark road near their grandmother's farm one night and mom walked into the side of a black cow and knocked herself out. It's not so funny NOW, but it killed me as a kid, and I also never go out in the dark without a flashlight because there might be cows.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:04 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]