Ouch!
I could hardly believe how much damage they can do to the front grille, bumper & radiator of a Focus, from a 70+ 'meeting'.
Now, do I use up the 2nd & last 'life' of my protected NCD, or just pay up?
Don't REALLY want advice - just had to share the pain!!!!
|
One of those things, I'm afraid, R. I've had a few knocks with fowl, a buck and a jackal - never pleasant, but unavoidable with wild animals.
Just thank your lucky stars it wasn't the windscreen - that can be very nasty.
|
|
on new years eve, at about 10.40 pm, i was driving along, and a dog ran out in front of my car, so i slammed the brakes on, but i was on ice, the car slid sideways, and nearly hit the dog, but what gets me is that the owner of the dog saw what had happened and he quickly ran into one of the houses, i wish i had seen what house as i would have said something, but i am glad that i didnt damage my car.
|
|
Don't bother avoiding them, if you skid and hurt yourself and/or kill other people in a subsequent crash it's yo-ur fault, if you kill or maim the dog so what? If your doing the limit in a residential area the damage to your car won't be that bad and it's not your fault it's the dog owner's.
|
|
Obviously avoid the dog if you can avoiid the dog, just don't put your lifein danger, and that of other people by possibly skidding on ice and losing control, there's nothin g foolish about that, just common sense, I'm not saying simplyh slay all animals on the road.
|
|
Did the pheasant taste good
|
well tenderised, I'm sure, andy!
I know my buck (see above) went straight in the boot, and was hung and butchered soon afterwards!
The worst thing was my friend, also in the car, singing "who killed bambi?" all the way home...
|
Didn't have a chance of avoiding it. The owners saw it happen, we stopped (would have done so anyway) and apologised.
I was rather upset when a friend massacred a family of fox cubs playing in the road. He said it was them or us.
|
|
|
|
Roger
I can sympathise - a pheasant cost a friend of ours a new bonnet on a Clio a few years back.
We also have trouble round here with deer. I drove my daughter and a friend to a party just after Christmas, in the wilds of Wiltshire. It was a full moon which may have had the deer up and about, but during the 'deliver and collect' I had no less than 4 deer cross the road in front of me. After the second one, I was really travelling slowly I can tell you! I don't understand why they aren't scared off by car headlights; you'd think they look pretty scary to a deer or pheasant.
Regards
john
|
Friend/customer was really proud to buy a clean MB 190E as his retirement car. A few weeks later he was back after a pheasant had punched through the front grille.
£185 to replace!
Actually I thought it could have been more but still expensive for small animal contact.
David
|
|
|
|
A few years ago a friend of mine who worked for the Department of the Environment was attending a rather important and meeting with the RSPB on a sensitive matter about a new road and a bird reserve. He arrived at the reserve to be met by the chief conservation officer. As they shook hands, my friend saw to his horror that a Pheasant was sticking out of the front of his car. It had gone in head first. He managed to guide the RSPB man into the nearest hide, then found an excuse to go back to his car to remove the bird.
Chris
|
|
|
John
You're not the only one with deer trouble.
I do about 20 miles on rural roads and have had a couple of occasions when deer have run across in front of the bike, MUCH too close for comfort. One was in the dipped headlight beam not more than six feet in front, too close for me to even react.
I heard it's hooves slipping on the road surface above noise of the engine and wind at about 50 mph. Not an experience I would like to repeat, next time it might be a quarter of a second the wrong way.
|
|
|
|
A firend of mine in the USA said the one you must avoid running over at all costs is the skunk - apparently your car will stink of a sort burnt rubber for many weeks to come.
|
Anthony,
your friend gives good advice.
When a skunk gets run over he sprays the whole of the underside of the vehicle. Even steam cleaning never completely gets rid of the smell.
Kevin...
|
|
|
|
I agree with Humpy I'm afraid, Mark.
A mates sister was maimed by a car that swerved into her to a void a sheep.
Very, pretty very young girl. To all intents and purposes her life is over.
For animals brake hard in a straight line unless you can safely take evasive action...
|
You said this........
> For animals brake hard in a straight line unless you can
> safely take evasive action...
He said this.......
> if you kill or maim the dog so what?
Clearly one should not take risks with the life of a person in order to preserve that of a dog.
However, "...kill or maim the dog so what....". ?????
Fool.
|
|
I apologise, I didn't mean to suggest I do not care about what happens to the dogs, they are, after all, only under control of their owners. I was trying to compare the death or injuring of a dog with the potential consequences of the loss of control of a car in icy conditions in a built up area.
|
> I was trying to compare the death
> or injuring of a dog with the potential consequences of the
> loss of control of a car in icy conditions in a built up area.
Now that I agree with. Trouble is, when something runs in front of you I think the reaction is normally just that, a reaction. And there isn't time to decide the full implications of hitting something or not before you have already had to take action.
Even then, it would be a tough person who would deliberately drive into an animal, even if it was the right thing to do.
M.
|
|
It's amazing how many people are prepared to walk along the pavement with their dog(s) OFF the leash, even in built-up areas with lots of traffic. I'm sure that if the dog ran into the path of my car and I hit it, somehow they would hold me to blame.
|
I'm sure that they would. If they even thought about it and the possibility of being wrong, they wouldn't do it in the first place. I would echo this for people who allow their children to wobble down the path on bicycles. Its only got to go wrong once.
But then, the brains of the average pavement occupier have never left me in awe.
M.
p.s. for the record, my dogs are rarely close to a road and when they are, despite their pretty advanced level of training, they are still always on a lead.
|
|
Similarly the idiotic parents who insist on thrusting their infant child in buggy out into the road while they are waiting to cross.
|
|
|
|
|
Well, you must know the classic highway code question. The different way in which you treat hitting a cat or a dog. You must always report hitting a dog but you don't have to report an incident with a cat since they are deemed wild animals. The dog should always be under proper control and so you could sue the owner of the dog for any damage, but good luck!!
|
Humpy
Cats may be deemed wild, but you can still be prosecuted under Cruelty to Wild Animals Legislation if, for example, you don't stop to help a badly injured one.
regards
john
|
|
|
|
|
|
I think it's all about conditioning and experience. You have an incident, you analyse what happened later and if/ when it happens again you react differently. That's surely what this website is about. You can read opinions about situations and this may affect how you 'debrief' yourself later and affect your conclusions. It may take a hard person to hit a dog but 'Dave' may consider that when a dog runs out in front of him and he remembers his mate's sister he may make a snap decision to hit the dog.
|
> he may make a snap decision to hit the dog.
You may be right, and with luck we'll never know, but I think that even for him the instinct would be to swerve and/or brake hard.
|
|
|
|
the thing is that i nearly killed the dog by going sideways, thankfully the dog ran back to the owner before i hit it.
(i did not want to hit the dog because i like all creatures great and small)
|
|
|
|
|
I think that one will hit the brakes instinctively, there's no time to think out the whys and wherefores. You won't be looking directly at the object and won't discern whether it's an animal or a child in the time before you hit it.
I had an incident once when I braked hard on a forest road because of what seemed to be a large white Old English sheepdog which appeared from nowhere. It was a translucent polythene bag which had been inflated by the slipstream of the car in front passing over it. It scared me rigid.
|
|
f you have time to make the decision to swerve you can make the decision to not swerve. Look at incidents on motorways, I've seen many, where someone moves into a lane which is already occupied, the car that is in danger of beinbg hit realises and swerves 'instinctively'. If you are not positive you are swerving into a free lane I would stay fast and be hit. Otherwise that's how pileups get caused.
|
humpy wrote:
>
> f you have time to make the decision to swerve you can make
> the decision to not swerve.
I dunno about anyone else, but I don't think its that easy for me.
I think I am a reasonably aware driver, and having to get out of somebody's way here is fairly typical task.
However, there are at least a few seconds involved since you were probably already aware of the existence of the car, and had been paying at least some level of attention.
When something rushes out in front of you I think the swerving away from it or the sudden braking happens before you've actually thought about what the "object" is.
Certainly I have stamped on the brakes viciously before now to avoid a branch, plastic bag or other debris which has suddenly appeared.
|
|
|
|
Not just pheasants, Roger - I assume it wasn't a typo and you didn't really meant peasants!
My pal had the radiator punched clean through on his Fiat Fiorino diesel van on the M5 near Cheltenham, and the bird was starting to cook on the block. Quite expensive!
Ian
|
|
|
Avoid hitting anything largish, family friend was killed some years ago by a deer in the New Forest. Simply slid up the bonnet through the windscreen and into the front seats at about 50mph, apparently deer are just the right height and with spindly enough legs to be scooped up cleanly on to the bonnet.
Have also had a sheep jump over a dry-stone wall on to the bonnet then off the bonnet over the wall on the other side while I was stopped waiting for its mates to cross the road in front of me. Luckily only an old banger so didn't worry too much about the dent, pretty solid things, sheep.
|
|
|
Family friend hit a deer many years ago (on the dock road in Liverpool for gods sake) on his way to work one morning. Apparently it tried to clear the car and missed. Wrote the car off.
Have to agree with the thought that you will react instinctively if some thing runs out in front of you.
The motoring section of the Telegraph had a good article about Elk (Moose) in Scandinavia a couple of years ago. The piece about them being the right height to come through the windscreen but being weak enough to split open on the way was hilarious if sick. Maybe HJ can find the article for us and post it.
Bill
|
|
|
With reference to the earlier comments on deer. I had a near miss a few years ago near Longleat (there's plenty of deer around there). Emergency braking and clipped it's hoof. Whilst in Calias earlier this year I was wandering around a motor accessory shop and came accross a little gadget called a deer whistle (french translation). It's supposed to emit a high pitched noise to scare away any prancing deer in a 1/2 km radius when travelling at 30 mph or more. Since I've fitted it I've not seen a deer (only old dear's).
Placebo effect??
|
|
Iain, search for an earlier comment re Kudus and whistles.
|
|
|
|
In some parts of the US with large numbers of wildlife the brush bars are known as "Supper Bars" or "Dinner bars" and you can buy a roadkill cookbook with instrustions on IDing the flatened road kill
Ultrasonic whistles are popular for scaring the wild life as well they fit on the bumper and start working at about 15mph airspeed
Brushbars if they are the real sort and solidily made and attached to the frame of a car that has one like a Range Rover Provide amazing protection to the bodywork I Hid a 160lb Deer at about 50mph and wet sponge did the cleanup (and the venison was very tastey) A car would had sevier dammage and if it was low slung it would hav had the body through the windscreen... a chap was killed that way out here about 5 years ago...
BTW I had NO chance to avoid the Deer jumped right infront of me about 10feet at a guess
~R
|
lady i know planned to cook the rabbit which she killed...
big mistake as she ended up with a car full of fleas
|
Back in the early '70s I was with a friend in their pride 'n joy (a Mini) and she hit a pheasant (or dit it hit us?) at about 35 mph on a essex country road. It stove in the wavey metal radiator grill and ran off before we could catch it... Doh!
Luckly it was not too expensive to replace the grill but the shock and suprise lasted for quite a while.
|
|
|
|
