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Saw the scariest thing in my 5 years of trucking last week

7K views 64 replies 17 participants last post by  The-Dullahan 
#1 ·
Was driving north of Cincinnati on I-71 at 3 AM. All of a sudden not more than a few hundred yards ahead of me, I just start seeing headlights spinning in a very frantic barrel roll fashion across my lanes on the interstate, coming to rest upside down leaning against a concrete wall on an overpass.

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It almost bounced over the wall onto the road 35 feet below. Another trucker and I both stopped right away and ran up to the SUV. It was a 2004 or so Explorer. Thankfully the two occupants were ok. We helped pull them outa the upside down truck, and stayed with them until police got there.

Definitely the craziest thing I've seen since I've been driving truck. They must have rolled 2-3 times b4 resting on the wall. The driver told me a deer ran out in front of him and he swerved. I really hate deer. They cause way to many wrecks on the roads!
 
#9 ·
I can't tell you how many claims I pay for idiots that would rather not hit a squirrel and instead swerve into opposing lanes of travel, and since it's a rental car, and they didn't bother to buy any coverage and also decided as an adult, that it's a good idea to not have any of their own insurance;

Guess who gets to ultimately foot the tens of thousands of dollars in property damage and/or injury claims?
 
#5 ·
"Deer alerts" don't. Ask anyone over here on the Shore - which is darn near paved with the giant brown rats.

Not long ago someone opined that there are far, far more deer east of the Mississippi now than at any time before the early 20th century. Why ? Because humans used to eat the bastards 24/7/365. Then Bambi came along and all of a sudden it was simply horrible to eat wild game. (But we still kill hogs with a single .22 at the base of the skull, and we still kill beef cattle with a 12# sledge hammer to the forehead and a slit throat.)
 
#10 ·
We are having record populations here too. Another part of the problem is the lack of natural predators. They have started repopulating the wolf in our state and it is going well, but the minute a wolf kills a cow or horse, everyone goes nuts and wants to kill them off again!
 
#7 ·
CTSCHICK said:
Insurance companies do not recommend the deer alerts they actually recommend you hit the animal instead trying to avoid it because of the higher liabiltiy of hitting something or some one else and causing human injury or more property damage.
Very true. Just like with the wreck I saw, I believe things could have turned out better by hitting the deer instead of swerving, especially since he was in a higher profile vehicle, and that generation of Explorer isn't exactly known for their stability during high speed maneuvers.

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rodnok01 said:
Seen people go off the road and roll, doesn't look scary in the movies but in real life it'll pucker your drawers.
It's against nature to not swerve and hit something instead. Brake hard and wack the bastard... saves the car and you.
Yep. The scariest part was how close they came to bouncing over that guard rail and falling 35 feet to the road below.
 
#12 ·
I never swerve for a deer, racoon, cat, dog, whatever. I'll lock up the brakes trying to avoid them, but I'm not swerving, then wrecking my car so the stupid deer can live another day to get hit again by another car.

I've had a huge buck hit the side of my car. I was doing a good 60-70mph and he bolts across the road, I'm hard on the brakes. Luckily I saw him in plenty of time for him to make it, but no he decides to double back to the other side of the road. I thought for sure he was coming in the car with me, as I was driving a convertible with the top/windows down, but he just barley grazed the rear of the car, took my antenna off with his antlers.

Where I hit that deer was near a nature preserve in suburban Nashville, about 10-15 miles south of downtown. So many deer there, you can usually see them grazing on people's lawns in the broad daylight when you drive through that neighborhood.
 
#13 ·
Yep I won't swerve either. Hit the coyote that one time with our Saturn. Nearly totaled the car, but if I'd swerved, it coulda killed just for some dumb coyote.

One night a buddy of mine was driving his semi, passing another on the freeway when the other one swerved into my buddy's truck just to avoid a damn deer! My buddy saved it tho. He swerved into the median, which was very soft bc it had just rained, and he had 35k lbs in the trailer. Well even with all 18 wheels (I saw the tracks later that week and yes every wheel went into the mud at 65 mph) in the median, he pulled it off without making any contact with the other truck or the guard rail.
 
#14 ·
I'll lock up the brakes trying to avoid them, but I'm not swerving, then wrecking my car so the stupid deer can live another day to get hit again by another car.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I will do my best to avoid the damned things, though it will be evasive action, not a knee jerk reaction. That said, rest assured it is not done for their benefit. I'd just as soon avoid them, then kill 'em out of revenge. Have I mentioned how much I hate those damned things?
 
#21 · (Edited)
In Virginia there are at least a few fatalities each year from collisions with deer. I don't know about fatalities from Canadian geese ..... although I wish there were more geese in pots than on the thorough fares of the Old Dominion. That goes for deer too!

Bambi be damned, venison for all! Let them get deer instead of food stamps!
 
#25 ·
CTSCHICK said:
Insurance companies do not recommend the deer alerts they actually recommend you hit the animal instead trying to avoid it because of the higher liabiltiy of hitting something or some one else and causing human injury or more property damage.
Yeah if u hit the dear the insurance will process the claim as compressive not at fault it u swerve to avoid it and hit something than u are at fault
 
#31 ·
Why is it, every time a deer strike is discussed, someone has to one up it and mention moose? I suppose you could throw in elephants, rhinos and water buffalo as well, but there just aren't that many encounters. I've hit 2 deer. Dozens of near misses and hundreds of sitings. Never seen a moose so I'm not very worried about hitting one. There was estimated an estimated 1.23 million deer-vehicle collisions occurred in the U.S. between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. Couldn't find any estimates for moose.
 
#34 ·
Why is it, every time a deer strike is discussed, someone has to one up it and mention moose? 1.23 million deer-vehicle collisions occurred in the U.S. between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012. Couldn't find any estimates for moose.
Moose ARE deer. Thereby, no one changed the subject. Likewise, your 1.23 million estimate should be including Moose.

Which is bigger a moose or a camel? I am sure we will hear from the Arctic one soon.
Depends on what type of Camel we're talking about. Dromedary Camels weigh about the same as adult Bull Moose. However the Bactrian Camel weighs substantially more, averaging between 800 to 1,000 pounds more.

So let's hear this story about hitting a camel. Even I've never done that. I've hit a lot of Alligators though.
 
#33 ·
About 10 years ago I was driving on 422 heading for a nice camping weekend with some friends my buddy tony was driving his mercedes ML 500
He hit not one but 2 dears
They where seriously commenting suicide because they both ran out into traffic and infront of the SUV and just looked at us we where doing 70 no damm way in hell we could stop
Or miss them
 
#53 ·
That is nothing...the real damage is when you hit a Whale....those can really mess up your car!:ill:

Oh well, she shouldn't have ordered that expensive steak and then complain the date was lousy, while wearing sandals that makes it look like she's baking bread in her shoes..
 
#38 ·
Our ever enlightening Dullahan is quite right! It does depend on what kind of camel one happens to hit. Where I was living at the time, the lighter duty Dromedary was a mainstay of the areas transportation system. The first time I saw a Bactrian camel, in the zoo in the city of Khartoum in the Sudan, I was shocked to see not only their size but the heft of these beasts. These two humpers are truly the "Mack Camels" of the desert ship world. I have a picture of this huge camel somewhere, taken just before it tried to rip my friend's camera from hanging around his neck and almost doing the man in!

Fortunately my collision was with a youthful dromedary who was free of freight at the time. I was on my way back up the road which winds through two mountain ranges on its' way from sea level at the Red Sea to the 7000 foot plateau where the city of Asmara, Eritrea is located. The distance from the coastal plain to the escarpment at the edge of the plateau is only about 25 air miles, but it takes about 60 miles, at least, of switch backs to make the climb. The road was built by Italians during their colonial period in Eritrea and is still considered a major engineering feat. The road is also the only means of road transport from the Red Sea port of Massaua to the lovely capital city of Eritrea, Asmara.

On this particular day I was working my way back up the road, second and third gearing it, in a long wheel base 1964 Land Rover that I had borrowed from the U.S. East African Mapping Mission for a run to Massaua. I was about to corner a blind curve at about 30 mph when I was confronted with a young one humper rounding the bend at a high rate of speed. A collision was unavoidable. The young camel smashed the Land Rover's front bumper and hood (bonnet) and flipped up on the roof of the car. Fortunately for me the Land Rover was equipped with an accessory "sun shield' second roof and a reinforced cargo rack. The camel missed the windshield as he catapulted up on the roof crushing aluminum bodied front end and roofs in the process. Miraculously the Rover was still drivable even though it was would have been deemed "totaled" if it had been in the U.S. or Europe. As this happened in Africa, several workers with hammers spent weeks pounding out the bends and dents and the Land Rover lived to serve many more years of service (although not with the Mapping Mission.

It was possible to run into many things while driving wheeled vehicles in Africa. But I never heard of anyone actually hitting an elephant or a rhino. Many hit camels and many more were attacked by phalanxes of baboons who waited along the few highways to bombard cars and trucks with rocks and pieces of cactus. While vehicular traffic was never a problem, donkey and camel caravans often slowed car and truck traffic to a crawl. You think diesel fumes are bad, you have never experienced "camel smog!"
 
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