Animal Collisions
A leading cause of accidents is Hitting Animals. While not as common as Road Rage or even Driving the Wrong Way (still funny) it is still a common cause of accidents. Some even being lethal because, hey, those are some big animals sometimes. Aside from causing major damage to your car by hitting the animal, approx. 23% of these accidents are caused by swerving to AVOID hitting the animal. That part I 100% believe because I would gladly total my car to avoid hitting a bunny. I'm almost serious.
So how threatening are these accidents? This might surprise you…
There are 725,000 to 1.5 million accidents that involve animals in the U.S annually.
Over 200 human fatalities are caused by these accidents annually.
2% of deer-car collisions result in human fatality while 85% of deer-motorcycle collisions result in fatalities.
From 2000-2006, 2,307 fatal accidents were caused by animal collisions while 29,000 are injured annually.
Taking it seriously yet? I mean, think of all the animals that were harmed. Sad face. In all seriousness, that is way too many fatalities caused by something I didn’t even believe was so possibly fatal. So how do you avoid these accidents?
1. Try to Avoid Hitting the Animal - No seriously. This is the #1 tip on several sites that I researched. How do you avoid drowning? Don’t drown. How do you avoid wrecking your car? Don’t wreck. How do you avoid getting dehydrated? Don’t dehydrate. Duh. I wish I could find some deep meaning to this tip, but I can’t get passed the simplicity of it.
2. Slow Down – Just hit the brakes and lessen the blow. If anything it will cause less damage to you and the animal, and at most it gives the animal time to move.
3. Speed Up? - Yeah, this one is kind of messed up. Again, listed on several sites so I assume it works. The best reason I got was that when you break, the car’s bumper pushes down, which could cause the animal to roll up into your windshield. If you speed up at the last second though, the front bumper lifts which keeps the animal on the bumper.
4. Turning off your headlights is one that I’ve also seen here and there. It supposedly is like a flashbang when an animal sees headlights. So, if you turn them off, the animal can get out of that daze and run off.
My favorite tip is still just… Just don’t hit the animal folks. Just don’t do it. No.
