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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Deer can teleport, this is well known to anybody that has done sufficient mileage in Northern Canada.

I guess that people who never hit a deer think you're just joking, but I know what you mean. It's not just that they blend so well in their surrounding, but if they're moving very fast they can jump quite some distances.

I hit my first deer during a night-time driving lesson. It just manifested itself in a turn right in front of the car. It happened so freaking fast that even my driving instructor didn't get right away what happened. (To be fair this was his first deer accident too). There were just something flying in front of the car, getting hit and flying away to the side of the road.

It was very different from my imagination which formed during my childhood hearing adults talking about split second decisions in case of a deer appearing in front of the car.

Deer also have a survival instinct that works against them. You will sometimes see a deer cross the road going one direction and think that they're safe, but then they will suddenly jump in front of you going the other direction. The reason is the deer had a fawn and they see you as a big predator. So they had the fawn hunker down on the other side of the road and then jump in front of your face to distract you into chasing them to increase the chance that the fawn can escape.

If you ever see a deer cross in front of you, especially with a fawn in tow, slow down and be prepared to slam on the brakes because they might be preparing to jump right into your path. These kinds of accidents are especially deadly because they don't hit the bumper, they tend to smash directly into the windscreen, sometimes breaking through and crushing the front seat passengers.

You don't even have to go north, really. Just driving a few nights on a quiet, dark road outside the big cities late at night will convince you that deer 1) basically teleport 2) are stupid 3) can be absolutely terrifying when they show up out of nowhere, despite 2. (And yes, 2 only really applies w.r.t. cars and roads.)

Possibly time of year dependent, I guess, but seriously, one weekend of nightly midnight drives out in the Shuswap area of BC was all it took. I now/still respect the effects of the deer, but marvel at their unmitigated stupidity.

True. I crashed into one somewhere in Iowa, we weren't going fast, maybe 45 mph, the deer probably jumped up from the ditch besides the road. Poor deer. Great people in the village where we ended up with the damaged car, the local bodyshop guy opened up for us in the middle of the night, pulled the front more or less back into shape and plugged a hole in the rad and the valve cover. Total charge for 6 hours of work + materials: $0. So we could continue our trip to friends in the Rocky Mountains with only a slight delay when we originally thought we'd have to abort the trip right there.

Re: stupid.

I have surprised deer on the road, at night, and had them respond by running toward me. That did not help the probability of a collision...

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