Hitting a deer on the road can be terrible. Your car can suffer terrible damage and there's a real risk of losing control and crashing. And, from the deer's point of view, it's also a decidedly unpleasant occurence.
How likely are you to hit a deer over the course of a year of driving? According to the insurance company State Farm, West Virginia is the riskiest state with a likelihood of 1 in 40. You're probably safe in Hawaii, where it's 1 in 6,801. In the state of New York, it's 1 in 141, so be careful when cruising through Brooklyn.
Link -via Joe Carter | Image: State Farm
There was a rather dramatic accident last year just down the road from me (in the outskirts of San Luis Obispo) where a motorcycle rider hit a deer (apparently the suicidally thrillseeking deer decided to race the cycle down the road and ran into it while the cyclist was trying to avoid it); he ended up under both the dead deer and his cycle, which was leaking gasoline that started burning. A neighbor of mine was driving through and pulled him out, but he got lotsa burns and broken bones. (No, nobody got any barbecued deer meat out of it) We still watch out for drag-racing deer here.
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I live just 90 minutes north of NYC in the Hudson Valley, and I've hit two deer in the past three years. Both were low speed, fortunately, so no death or auto damage. But they are everywhere. I frequently have herds of 10 or more in my yard.
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Used to live in CNY and had many near misses. At least NY cleans up its road kill. PA not so much. Seeing deer carcasses for so many year has imprinted my brain to think dead deer when I see a large palm frond in the road down here.
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Large cities like NYC definitely throw this chart off. I live in the Finger Lakes and have had two deer hit me (yes, both jumped into my car) in the the last three years. There's a 20 minute drive I make a few times a week that I'll see 10-15 deer on average either crossing the road or directly next to it.
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This reminds me of the Deer Crossing post we had on Neatorama a while ago.
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You never see any deer carcasses on the side of the road where I live. Word gets around quick.
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I used to go to children's soccer games in rural Virginia and parents would compare how many deer they had hit; "I hit 5", "I've hit 4", etc.
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