GRA
Well-known member
Just guessing here, but one of the reasons for the lack of impact with the windshield on the Fiat is that cars of that era weren't required to have sloping grills and hoods so that any pedestrian wouldn't be driven over, but instead be rolled up onto the hood. Additional damage to the Tesla is most likely just the difference between a car that is designed with crush space, and one that isn't - I have no doubt that my '65 Impala would look a lot less damaged by a deer impact at that speed than a modern car, but as my head would probably be through the windshield and/or my chest impaled on the steering column, if I didn't have a broken neck (it only had lap belts, the seat backs didn't lock and there were no head rests, never mind air bags), it would be small comfort.GetOffYourGas said:edatoakrun said:No, since (unlike the buck) none of the nearby trees ran into my lane... and I never lost control of the car.DesertSprings said:Did you also hit a tree afterwords?
If you read the posts above, you will learn that
1) The driver was injured by the collision with the deer
2) The vehicle struck a tree after the deer (possibly a result of the injury followed by losing control of the car)
As for how this driver got injured and you didn't? Pure speculation, but it could simply be the height of impact with the deer. Deer like to jump. If the deer hit the X in the windshield, it probably was mid-jump. I'm guessing in your case that the deer would have jumped nearly clear over your car, or maybe landed in your lap :shock:
In this particular case, Scott thought that the deer might have been hit first by the car in front of him, which might well have caused the deer to roll up and over the roof of that car and onto the hood of scott's car depending on the following distance, although I'd think it far more likely that it was thrown high or jumped. In the '70s I saw a deer hit the car in front of me and roll up onto the hood, but its momentum carried it off to the side and back onto its feet, and adrenaline allowed it to run off the road and into the forest (where it presumably died shortly thereafter).
Then there's just random chance - unlike NHTSA and IIHS tests, real world crashes can have a lot more variables. Personally, I'm in no doubt that any car meeting modern safety standards is far more likely than an older model to leave me unhurt or at least with much less severe injuries (even though it's more likely to be totaled), but that's no guarantee that it will do so in every single case. I've had a deer commit suicide using my car once, in the early '90s, but in that case I just hit the deer's head and neck with the left front corner of my Subaru (it was heading right), which spun it around and slammed its body into my left rear door. The only injury was to my car, about $1,300 worth of body damage, but it was still drivable. The deer died about two minutes later (all its legs were broken, plus whatever internal injuries it had suffered). If it had been straight in front of me instead of offset, who knows what would have happened - its a crapshoot.