Hit the gas?

A friend and I were traveling south on I-93 Sunday evening (on our way home from Wilderness First Aid classes at SOLO, of all things) when a deer appeared on the road ahead of us in the travelling lane. Despite the temptation to stand on the brakes and swerve, the driver didn't. The car hit the deer but remained in control. The deer, and the front driver side of the car, are history. This happened right before the rest area so we pulled in and called for the State Police.

Here's a question: My friend's insurance company said they recommend speeding up in this situation. Any thoughts?

erugs said:

Here's a question: My friend's insurance company said they recommend speeding up in this situation. Any thoughts?

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One theory might be that braking lowers the front end of the car making it more likely that the deer will go through the windshield.

I would still vote for braking/steering around.

Either speed up or slow down, whichever you judge will make you less likely to hit the deer. Just don't swerve. Studies indicate that car occupants are much more likely to be injured if the driver chooses to swerve. (Swerving can lead to rollovers, car leaving the road, etc.). Car occupants are only seriuosly hurt on rare occasions when hitting a deer. I don't think this transfers over to moose, however, where car owners are likely to be hurt even in a straight on collision. Don't know if there is any comparative data for the moose case.

When I hit a deer about 20 years ago, my choice was to slow down (a line of three deer, nose to tail, ran out across the road like a fence, and there was no way I was going to avoid hitting one). Like in your case, I was uninjured, although the deer was killed and the car was damaged.

On the strictly practical side of things - If you hit a deer with your car, the damage from the deer and any subsequent damage is considered a 'Comprehensive' coverage claim and like like vandalism or a tree falling on the parked car, the company considers it a 'non chargeable' accident, meaning no surcharge on your insurance premium.

Swerve to miss the deer (or moose) and roll the car, land in a ditch, or hit a tree, and it's considered a collision claim, and a chargeable accident by most insurance companies.

For me, it's instinctive to try and miss the animal.

Nothing is going to work 100% of the time but my solution is to aim at the deer while taking your foot off of the accelerator. The reasoning is simple, your reaction time, and the movement of the deer will almost certainly mean that the deer will not be in the spot that you are aiming for by the time you get there. All of this is done with smooth movements not by swerving or jerking the wheel.

Keith

Being Massachusetts born and bred, I'd just lean on the horn and throw the damn deer the finger. That'll teach 'im.

Seriously, I'd like to hear the insurance companys reasoning for speeding up. I can't figure that one...

erugs said:

Here's a question: My friend's insurance company said they recommend speeding up in this situation. Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Yes. They're wrong.

First, like was said above: DO NOT SWERVE. Better the deer and fender than you, your passengers and the passengers in the car you just careened into. Other than that, if I have time to think, I'll let off the gas and favor the direction of the butt. Myth Busters dispelled the "Speed Up" theory. Slowing reduces impact forces. So: "Don't swerve. Let off gas. Maintain control. Aim for azz" is my rec.

oh, and blow the horn, they hate horns...and watch behind for the next one.

Whats the best defense? A good offense. No seriously. At night, especially at times of the year more prone to deer collisions, I make it a point to spend a lot of time scanning the sides of the roads at night. Look for the glint from tehir eyes when your lights fall on them, or look for general movement. Use your high beams whenever you possibly can. If you see a deer when it jumps into the main cast of your headlights it is already too late and more often then not your hitting the deer. But if you can spot it (or it's movement) before it gets to that point your odds of avoiding the collision go up.

Brian

Chip said:

Yes. They're wrong.

First, like was said above: DO NOT SWERVE. Better the deer and fender than you, your passengers and the passengers in the car you just careened into. Other than that, if I have time to think, I'll let off the gas and favor the direction of the butt. Myth Busters dispelled the "Speed Up" theory. Slowing reduces impact forces. So: "Don't swerve. Let off gas. Maintain control. Aim for azz" is my rec.

oh, and blow the horn, they hate horns...and watch behind for the next one.

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While I applaud MythBusters and their encouraging the general public to adhere to scientific experimentation and to questions results that are obtained through such methods, it's important to remember that the show is primarily for entertainment.

I think I'd rather trust the Insurance Companies, and their experience with (literally) thousands of collisions and the results due to how the driver responded.

Same thoughts as Chip. Most important is to maintain control of the car, to avoid major injury to driver, passengers, or the occupants of other vehicles. (The other vehicles are the ones heading towards you at highway speed while yours is sideways across the road after spinning out from trying to swerve, or because some piece of bodywork punctured a tire.) Speeding up is not helpful.

The theory that slamming the brakes makes the deer more likely to roll up the hood and into the windshield has some merit (though it's also a bit silly: the real risk from slamming the brakes is that you'll lose control of the car). You can certainly pitch the nose of a car downward if you hit the brakes hard (assuming dry pavement, etc). But the converse isn't true: you won't see a significant pitch-up by hitting the gas. No car has that much torque at highway speeds.

The most important advice is: keep your speed down at all times. No other advice can help you in the event it's a moose that jumps onto the road.

erugs said:

...Here's a question: My friend's insurance company said they recommend speeding up in this situation. Any thoughts?

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I don't think the insurance company's recommendation to speed up has anything to do with the physics of the vehicle itself. Rather, I think it has to do with a deer's behavior - they are often mesmerized by headlights, first freezing and then bolting, sometimes directly into the path of the vehicle. I believe the reason they suggest speeding up is to try to get past the deer before it bolts into your path.

But I could be wrong ...

Edit - I just did a google, and found this interesting advice

Whatever idiot claimed to represent advice from an insurance company in telling you to speed up should be forced to sit through high school physics again.

Increasing speed will increase the force with which you strike the deer and simultaneously decrease your ability to control the car. Decreasing speed will increase the time for the deer to react and move out of the way, while reducing the force of an impact and giving you additional control.

You know why people hit deer on the highway? Because they're going too damn fast to slow down in time and avoid the collision. I've been driving in deer country for forty years and in moose country for fifteen of those years. In that time, I've had one deer come up out of the ditch and run into the side of my car. I've had one deer run across in front of me and narrowly miss getting hit. I've had several moose cross the highway in front of me. I've encountered two very large, very dark bison bulls lying on the Alaska Highway in the dark. I've had black bears run across the highway in front of me. I've yet to hit any of their kin with the front of my vehicle.

Slow down at night. And as NewHampshire has so rightly said, be aware of what's coming out on the road edge, at all times of the day.

Kevin Rooney said:

Edit - I just did a google, and found this interesting advice

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Hmm....

* "more than 1.5 million car crashes in the United States that involve deer or large animals". Over what time interval? Looks to me like they are using a many year interval (perhaps all such accidents on record). This is an advertisement by a law firm...

* "Turn off your head lights." Might also make it hard for you to see where you are going if you are in a dark area...

* "Speed up at the last possible moment." As Nartreb noted, this will have minimal effect.

Doug

A personal observation about my night time experiences with deer (unsupported by a long term study) is that if the deer freezes in the headlights of a car, they will immediate jump and run once the headlight is no longer shining on them. Most standard headlights have a roughly triangular beam with its apex at the headlamp and the majority of the light is focused forward, therefore with the deer at the side of the road, they are illuminated and freeze in the headlights until they are out of the headlamp beam. Unfortunately with beams focused forward, the deer is out of the headlight beam just about the time they are just ahead of the car and they jump out and run in time to hit the car. One of the benefits of my Civic and newer headlights is a wider beam pattern to illuminate the side the road for much longer than the prior standard headlamps. On prior vehicles I installed clear cornering lights that were designed to light up the area to on either side of the vehicle and had several incidences where I could see deer jump behind my vehicle. Coincidentally, the one deer that I did hit was with a vehicle with standard headlights and no cornering lights.

The other observation is that if one deer runs out of the woods, plan on several others.

Speeding up make sense if you are driving a DeLorean. What is the magic speed, 88mph?

What ever you stay in your lane and on the road.

brianW said:

Speeding up make sense if you are driving a DeLorean. What is the magic speed, 88mph?

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and 1.21 gigawatts!

Tim

I saw a deer strike yesterday morning on 495 in Mass.

I was travelling in the middle lane of a 3 lane highway about 30 yds behind the strike vehicle. A large doe came out of the median, jumped the guard rail and dashed across the left lane. It happened so fast I don’t believe the strike vehicle had a chance to brake, at least I don’t remember seeing the brake lights. The deer was struck by the left front of the car and was launched 10’ in the air. As I braked, I thought the deer would come down on top of my car.

Unfortunately the deer was toast; fortunately it appeared the driver of the launch vehicle was uninjured.

In this case I don’t think any fancy avoidance techniques (aim for the butt, aim for the junk, brake, speed up, put it in hyper drive etc) would have changed the inevitability.

DSettahr said:

While I applaud MythBusters and their encouraging the general public to adhere to scientific experimentation and to questions results that are obtained through such methods, it's important to remember that the show is primarily for entertainment.

I think I'd rather trust the Insurance Companies, and their experience with (literally) thousands of collisions and the results due to how the driver responded.

Click to expand...

Agree Myth Busters is entertainment, but still feel their experiment is valid. I disagree, sadly, that the insurance companies know better, even though they should: They have no "reaction" data re. the driver response, only the resulting damage. That and this was one rogue agent, I believe, not a proclamation by the insurance industry. The OP was about deer strikes, not moose, anywho. Generally hitting something at a slower speed will cause less damage. The risk of slamming on the brakes is you'll get rear ended or lose control.

" "Moose Mayhem"
"It is better to run over a moose at high speed than with the brakes." Busted.

To test this belief, the Build Team first created a rubber model of a moose with similar weight and consistency after personal study of actual animals. They then ran similar passenger cars into the moose at different speeds and found that while greater speeds did make the moose hit higher, it still did not clear the car and still caused extreme amounts of damage. They repeated the test with a low sports car at the highest test track speed to give the moose the best chance of clearing the roof, but again it was not enough and the moose damaged the car enough that any driver would have been seriously injured. The Build Team surmised that for the moose to actually clear a car would require a vehicle as low as a Formula One race car traveling at 97 miles per hour (156 km/h)."

The scene Craig witnessed sounds a lot like what happened to me a couple summers ago. I don't think my foot would have had time to reach the brake pedal if I'd tried, and swerving would have been suicide.

Since then I drive a lot more slowly, especially at night, and I routinely use my fog lamps because they illuminate the side of the road better than my headlamps alone. (I do it to improve my chances of spotting a deer before it leaps; if it freezes the deer as peakbagger suggests, so much the better.)

A deer hit me afew years ago early one morning in PA. She crossed the road in front of me with her fawn. I slowed down and kept the car straight. She/they passed infront of me nice and easy. I'm still going nice and slow. She turns and runs back into the road and right into me.

Ya can only do the best you can.