Bambi
Posted: Thu 27 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Driving, Travel 5 Comments »Last night, I had my first real accident in the car – nothing serious, and nothing overly damaged, but still my first real one.
Driving on one of the local(ish) country roads, I came round a corner and there was a deer crossing the road towards me, right at the white line. Absolutely nothing I could do – even though I was “only” going at 30mph, I didn’t even have time for an emergency stop, let alone to swerve or anything. As it was, I clipped it’s head, definitely killed it, but didn’t damage anything else.
In a lot of ways, it was just luck. Five seconds later, I’d have hit it straight on, and done a lot more damage to the car. Five seconds earlier, I would probably not even have seen the deer, or been able to easily avoid the stupid creature.
But instead, I came along at just that time, and killed it. I’m not happy about it, but I know there’s nothing else I could have done.
Not knowing the procedure, I called the police this morning (No, not on the 999 number) to check whether it needed to be reported, but apparently if it’s a deer it doesn’t need reporting. Dogs, cattle and the like yes, but not a deer. (The actual list is “horse, cattle, ass, mule, sheep, pig, goat or dog.” according to the Road Traffic Act). So I don’t need to report it.
All told, “just one of those things”. But still, I wish it hadn’t happened.
🙁
My dad once knocked down and killed a deer during the christmas season. He tried to report it – first to the police and then the RSPCA… unfortunately they didn’t take him very seriously as he reported it as a reindeer and they all thought it was someone trying a hoax!
(at least he didn’t say he’d killed Rudolph, I suppose!)
same thing happened to me driving on the a12 coming from london to chelmsford, i had no warning and cliped the deer, lucky for me the deer didnt die as it ran off and no damage to my car either but i was doing 70 mph and the thud scared me to death i can tell yeh
If you were really living the good life, you would have done what one of my neighbours did – load it up into the car, take it home and get it butchered. There’s good eating on one of those!
Ah, Tom, you don’t know your law on that one. If I’d not been the car that killed it, I could’ve picked it up and taken it home. But if you kill it and take it home, that comes under poaching etc, and (I think) still falls under the statutes about killing the monarch’s deer. I could be wrong on that last one though.
Besides, with Herself being vegetarian, it would’ve taken a long time to get through that one…
Nuts. Missed this, sorry to hear about it. I felt bad when I managed to hit a blackbird once (you know, when they try and fly across the front of the car at the last minute..)