Deerly Departed: All the Hot Deer-On-Car Data You Can Handle
Tornadoes aren't the only way Mother Nature strikes fear in the hearts of Midwesterners.
Here in C/D’s home state of Michigan, dead deer on the roadside are a common sight. Residents of less-savage states might be shocked by just how frequently some of their countrymen crash into deer. Since 2007, State Farm has compiled a record of the collisions between its customers and deer, and it has used that data to estimate the likelihood of drivers around the country being involved in such an incident. To wit:
| You're most likely to hit a deer in the fall. On any given day in November, a collision with a deer is three times more likely than on any day from February through August. | states account for 34 percent of all deer-vehicle collisions. The five least dangerous, just 0.4 percent. |
When we clobbered
a deer during performance testing in Michigan, we learned that when a
Volvo hits a deer at 124 mph, the deceleration due to impact is 0.3 g.
Now you know. |
Between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2012, Pennsylvania motorists hit more deer than drivers in any other states: an estimated 115,571. The rest of the top five: Michigan, 97,856; New York, 80,262; Ohio, 67,699; Wisconsin 52,525. |
California's odds being just 1 in 940 didn't prevent one of us from hitting a deer there last year—proof of how truly exceptional the C/D staff is.
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Fewest car-deer collisions: Hawaii, 134; Washington, D.C., 495; Nevada, 1184; Alaska, 1253; Rhode Island, 2000. | Not everyone reports a deer strike, and not every driver is insured. So the true numbers are probably much higher. Happy hunting. |
West Virginia has led the rankings for the past six years straight—every year that State Farm has calculated the likelihood of a "deer-vehicle confrontation." A driver in West Virginia is 170 times more likely to hit a deer than a driver in Hawaii. |
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Total number of vehicle-deer collisions in the U.S. in the last reported year: |
| 1,231,710 |
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