Pennsylvania is the worst
About 150 Americans a year die as a result of 700,000 collisions with deer, which reportedly cause over a billion dollars in damage.
A disproportionate number of those fatalities are motorcyclists. The Wisconsin DOT site devoted to the deer problem says that while only 2% of car-deer collisions were fatal to humans, 84.9% of the motorcycle-deer crashes involved human fatalities. (This percentage has increased in recent years.) The deer do even worse.
Wow. When I read that stat (84.9% fatality rate for motorcycle vs. deer crashes), I’m even more grateful to walk away from that crash with nothing more than a fractured wrist and some road rash on my wrist and palm. I’m also grateful that we probably don’t have quite as big of deer here in Austin as they do in Wisconsin. Also, as much of Wisconsin is rural, there is a chance that many of those fatal collisions occured at speeds greater than the 50 mph I was doing when I hit my deer.
Mississippi’s missing. I’ve hit two deer, a dog, over twenty rabbits, an untold number of opossum and at least one skunk on Mississippi highways. I’ve never hit any kind off animal outside the state of Mississippi.
Left by Marc on November 8th, 2005 at 6:39 am