("Robert Henry" wrote)
snip
Later, in the mountains of NY at 1am, there was an inch of snow on the
road
and snowing. A deer was in the middle of the road, there was oncoming
traffic, and I was going about 40. As I got closer and the cars converged
on
the deer, the deer ran in front of me. I was able, somehow, to steer left
into oncoming traffic as the deer went to my right, and steer back into my
lane to avoid the oncoming traffic. When we finally came to a stop, I
stalled the car, and couldn't restart it until I got a grip on what almost
just happened. I know without ABS, I would have hit something.


We drill this into the heads of our high school age nieces: ALWAYS HIT THE
DEER!!!

Hit the deer at the slowest speed possible, sure ...but don't go nuts trying
to avoid contact. Hell, I've had the nieces out practicing hitting deer.
Look! A (real) semi is in the oncoming lane and a (real) huge pickup is
behind you, there's an (imaginary) deer wandering out on the 2 lane road,
and you're doing 50 mph. What do you do?...right now!

Our Answer: Slow down - "thud", watching carefully your rearview mirror AND
for that semi to cross into your lane ...trying to avoid hitting the second
damn deer that just darted out on the other side of the road.

We tell them hitting the deer is about 4th on the list of what's important -
right now. Who's behind you, who's in front of you, and how's your car
moving down the road are all that matter for the next 10 seconds. Drive the
car!! (Hmm. Sounds familiar, like I've heard that somewhere before)

To some of their friends, I'm "the uncle guy" that says always hit the deer.

BTW, congrats on missing that mountain deer. I've only hit one deer in over
25 years of driving, but I was on my motorcycle - so it's worth more points.
g

--
Montblack
http://lumma.de/mt/archives/bart.gif