Deer in Headlights
It all started with an innocent purpose of a late night pizza from a local pizza place. Local out by me means a 6 minute drive through hilly, curvy, back roads with loads of forest and an occasional small farm. A nice little drive for a delicious pizza dinner.
I have always been careful when driving in this area because there are deer everywhere. On my own street there is an equestrian club with sprawling fields that I’ve seen as many as 20 deer at a time during springtime evenings. Almost every night when I go anywhere I see at least one.
On this particular night, no amount of careful driving, swerving deftly or slamming of breaks managed to save the trip. The deer, while playing the role of an animal content in standing still on his side of the road, didn’t fool me even with the fact that he was tucked away in the opposite lane. There was an instinctive slamming of breaks and dodging to the outside edge of my side of the road at a mere glance of the beast. Apparently in an animal with such an amazingly dense body, the brain matter fails to be quite as capable because it saw a swerving, slowing vehicle coming down the road well away from its position and immediately thought “Wow, cool! I should run in front of that.” And so it did.
The actual event happened remarkably quickly. I would even argue that it happened about as fast as a deer can run, roughly. I freely admit a potentially skewed bias as the observer from inside the car and behind the steering wheel, but this was definitely a large deer. The good news in that is that it wasn’t a fawn, the bad news is that it was both more massive and tougher. Since the back roads have a speed limit of 30 mph and I was honestly going about that when I saw the deer, the impact was destined to not be a horror show. The anti-lock breaks were buzzing away and the car was slowing fast when the deer managed to get in front. I’d estimate 10 to 15 mph was the final impact speed.
Simple physics tell us how much energy a 3200 pound car has at even 10 mph, and how much velocity that translates into in an average 150 pound whitetail deer. The deer flew out of sight above the car and landed to the side of the road in a heap. I believe the translation of energy in an upward direction may have saved both the deer’s life and reduced the damage to my car. Picture shoveling snow for an understanding of how ramps work. My car was still running, now completely stopped, and both headlights were still working. I decided my evening did not need the view of a potentially nasty bit of carnage, so I drove off to complete my drive home.
Once in my own driveway, I walked around my car and thankfully discovered that there was no blood on my car. In its place was a very cracked and damaged driver’s side headlight dome complete with a mangled turn signal light inside, a slightly bent license plate, a bent and banged up hood, and bunches of deer fur wedged in as many places as the front of my car could offer to wedge it into. The good news here is that the damage wasn’t all that bad, and that the pizza had survived the rapid breaking.
The next morning, I drove down that same road on my way to work and was rather happy to see no deer on the side of the road. I firmly believe that while I may have beaten it up pretty badly, and that it may die sooner than was in its original plans, I didn’t kill it on the spot and that makes me pretty happy. Since there aren’t all that many hungry wild animals out in the suburban landscapes of Connecticut, I suspect it wandered off under its own power after the daze wore off.