Driving to work at about 4 am, doing about 40 on a main arterial. The dog, mostly black, came from my right. Didn’t see it till the last second and tried to swerve. Thunk thunk. Pulled over along with another car. The driver of the other car went out and checked on the dog. She said it looks like it’s dead. She pulled it out of the road to the sidewalk.
I feel terrible. Nothing I could do to avoid it.
Sorry to hear about it. Did the dog have tags?
Is calling the cops required in an accident/incident like this? I don’t know that I would have taken the other driver’s word for it.
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry to hear it. It’s not your fault. I was about 17 or 18 when a dog darted out of some bushes by the road side while I was driving. It was a small hound of some kind I think. There was an awful noise but I could see him get up and run off in the rear view mirror so the car must have gone over him completely without the wheels hitting him. I stopped and someone came out of one of the houses and said that dog was always running loose around the neighborhood and not to worry about it. It just happens, dogs lack a reasonable fear of cars for some reason, and it’s not like hairless apes are all that good at it without a lot of training and supervision either. I know it must bother you, but it’s really not your fault, nothing else you could have done. I suppose calling the police makes sense in case it’s owners could be notified but I can also see that being the pop-top on a can worms. Again, not your fault, just that you care is important.
That sucks; you have my sympathy. Nothing you could have done.
I know the feeling. I killed a cat we had adopted a few years ago. It was a rather chilly night, and, unbeknownst to me, the cat had crawled up into motor in front of the fan. That morning, when I cranked up to leave for work, I heard a terrible sound that I thought was catastrophic engine damage. And in a way it was. . . to the cat.
Now I’m starting to feel really bad about it again, just thinking about it.
^ This.
It happened to me once, on the way to work when I was in my 20s. I stopped, found a neighbor home, and they took the dog to an animal hospital (it turned it it was just stunned).
I’ll never forget, because I had an ASSHOLE of a boss at the time who felt it necessary to bellow out to the whole office,
“You’re late because you hit a DOG? The LEAST you could have done is have killed the fucking thing.”
Mine was a lovely gray cat that seemed to belong to the neighborhood and finally seemed to have adopted us. I was on the verge of making it formal - taking him in, getting to a vet, etc. - when one very hot day I started the car, let it warm up while the AC brought the interior temp down, then backed out… right over the cat, who had been sleeping in the car-shade and apparently ignored all the thunking and motor and gear noises.
He was obviously hurt but in no really obvious way, so I got him in a box and to the vet in minutes… but I’d crushed his hindquarters.
There are few things I’ve had more trouble getting over, and that’s saying something.
Preach it. The neighborhood’s full of cats, and I carefully inspect around and under my car each morning to make sure there are none around before I set off.
And, you know, for bombs.
Sorry that happened to you, racer.
I once hit a cat which darted into the street and I couldn’t avoid it. I pulled over right away; it was twitching in agony but, oddly, made no noise. An old man who was nearby said it was a feral cat and no one owned it; he was a lot more blasé about the incident than I was.
I had a choice not to hit a dog once and went ahead and hit it. My other options were to break hard and hit him anyway, swerve to the left and have a head on collision with another car, or swerve onto the right shoulder and hit another dog which was smarter than the one charging toward me on the highway. Still sucked though.
So… you knew both dogs?
Sorry. Did you at least check for a tag? Most dog owners would want to know why their dog didn’t come home and a courtesy call would have been nice.
My dad did the “chop our pet cat up inside the car engine” thing once when I was a kid. There was blood all over the driveway. It was pretty traumatic, but there’s no way to know if there is a cat in there before you turn the engine on. She was a nice, sweet little white cat.
Maybe banging on the car’s hood with the palm of your hand will startle a cat enough to cause it to flee before you start the engine?
Anyway, racer72, glad you’re OK. People sometimes die trying to avoid hitting animals.
They say the best course of action is to stay in your lane and hit the brakes until just before impact, if you have time to react at all.
I ran over a dog once when I was a teenager. Must have hit his/her head, was dead and bleeding out by the time I pulled over and got out of the car. Two neighborhood kids moved him to the side for me. Never thought about it much until now, whether that’s all they did. Jeez I hope so. I was too traumatized to think about trying to find the owner.
People in the city always blame drivers when they hit a dog and keep driving. In this city of endless potholes and bumpy patchworked roads, believe me, for one they never saw the dog dart from between parked cars and for two, unless the dog weighed more than 25-30 pounds, they had no idea they hit an animal.
And yes, for outdoor cat safety, always bang on the hood of the car when weather’s cooler, before starting it.
I hit a rabbit once and felt bad enough about that. I also hit a neighbor’s dog (the worst people in the neighborhood, unfortunately) and while it was slightly injured, it did recover.
Hugs to the OP.
My dog bolted out the side gate and made it 7/8 across the street until she was pranged by a guy in a pickup truck, right before my horrified eyes. No way he could have avoided her. Fortunately, she bounced off the front bumper and wasn’t rolled over, so she was just sore for a few days. It’s really not your fault. Hope you can let it go and send the dog off to doggie heaven with your fond wishes for a good afterlife.
I ran over a squirrel the other day I made a mental miscalculation and considered swerving but then I thought that might cause me to end up hitting it instead as squirrels are usually so slick and crafty at dodging car tires, while I was going through this in my mind I heard the chilling crunch under the tires, poor little tree rat. 
In two days I have suddenly come across two snakes crossing the roadway (miles apart, not the same snake twice). I’m pretty sure I managed to wheel-straddle both of them.
People in the city shouldn’t let their dogs run loose. It’s risky in the country, but in the city a dog can’t go far without running across a road. I’d never hit a dog intentionally, or really any other animal, maybe there are some sickos who would do that but the reality is that drivers can’t stop in time to avoid animals that dart out into the road. And as you say, driving through a lot of cities you might have no idea you hit a dog instead of a pothole.
In Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini, the title character, a macho Marine fighter pilot, likes to run over turtles because he likes the sound they make when their shells break.
Yeah, he’s a jerk.