As I drive down the highways here, I periodically come across signs that have a picture of a deer on them, and under that, something like “3 km.” What this means, of course, is “Watch out for wildlife crossing the highway for the next 3 km.”
I got to wondering, though - what if you drove say, 10 km past that sign and hit a deer? Would you have a legal leg to stand on to sue the relevant rural municipality (or Department of Highways or whomever) based on the argument, “You told me there were deer back there, but not on this stretch of the road. How was I supposed to know there were deer here?”
Has anyone ever attempted this, to your knowledge? Did they succeed?
You’d get laughed out of court. The signs are only there to warn you of areas where there is a higher likelyhood of deer crossings. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen elsewhere. It is the responsibility of the driver to keep an eye out for hazards, no matter where they are.
There was an interesting story here in Iowa just last week, a guy was driving his pickup truck on the Interstate with his 2 year old son next to him in a baby seat. A wild turkey flew in front of the car and it went right through the windshield, knocking him unconcious and miraculously going right over the head of the kid without touching him. The car drifted to a stop in a farm field at the side of the road and nobody was hurt badly. The guy seemed to take it with fairly good humor even though his truck was basically destroyed. A reporter was interviewing the victim from his hospital bed when he got a call from one of the rescue people who saved him, the guy also took the wild turkey home and plucked and dressed it. He offered the poor victim the dressed turkey. His response: “you can have it.”
Now what I want to know is if your insurance will pay for repairs if you hit a deer (or turkey, etc). Is it an “act of god” or do they cover it?
Actually, you’d have to sue the deer for not crossing in a designated deer crossing zone.
Seriously, yellow “diamond”-shaped signs are intended as warnings, not as regulations (in the US at least). They’re intended to warn the driver of particular hazards, but failure to place a warning sign does not indicate that a road will be free from hazards.
Actually, deer crossing signs have been criticised for exactly that–lulling people into thinking that if there’s no sign, there won’t be any deer. As someone who lives in an area overrun with the long-legged rodents, I can assure you that deer are far too dumb to read, so you’d better keep an eye out for them regardless of signage. If the state were legally required put up a sign everywhere you might see a deer on the road, they’d just have one sign at each border crossing: “Welcome to New York. Watch out for deer.”
All a sign means legally is that deer have been known to cross that stretch of road in the past.
Once, while driving through a part of Georgia I’d never been in before while on my way to Fort Benning, I noticed the following signs on the side of the road:
Warning: Tanks may cross road at any time without warning.
I hit a deer last year with my '99 Chevy Silverado. It did about $3000 worth of damage. That wasn’t much actually, front bumper, grill (gd plastic shatters easily), lights, driver’s side front fender, door and sill. Normal deductable (i)but(/i) premiums didn’t go up so I’m assuming they consider the deer is at fault. I think (i)some(/i) insurance companies do lower deductables for hitting deer but I think it depends on the company not on the state or federal regulations.
[deep breath] In a comparative negligence state, each individual involved in an accident will be assessed a percentage of negligence based on his contributions to the causation of the accident balanced against his attempt to avoid the accident once it became apparent the accident was likely to occur.
Used to work as a word processor at State Farm here in Minnesota, transcribing accident reports and other things. The adjusters have 100 percentage points of negligence to give out, and they usually knock themselves out trying to hand out all those points. The one time I ever saw them not do that was for somebody who had a deer jump out of nowhere directly in front of his car. I guess they wanted to give the points to the deer, but, as Steve Dallast said, “Never sue poor people. They don’t have any money.”
When I lived in LA in the late 80’s, they even had warning signs with a picture of a man and woman holding hands with a little child running. Apparently they had a number of instances where a family of illegal migrants would try to cross the highway, presumably in flight from “La Migra.” Even a few cases of the death of a person would be highly publicised, so they wanted to avoid such accidents.
Eventually, I think that they ended up putting high fences in the medians to discourage running across the highways.
Law-abiding deer, of course, only cross at the signs. It’s only those damn teen aged deer that flaunt the laws.
that having been cleared up, check the laws in your particular vicinity and with your insurance co. In my case, the insurance will cover it if I don’t serve off the road in an attempt to miss the deer (bad idea anyhow, deer rarely are traveling alone)
I recall a similar incident. Someone hit a deer, but it wasn’t killed, it plunged through the windshield and ended up in the back seat, kicking and fighting. What do you do? Get the hell out of the car!
I hit a deer and it did, oh, about $7000 worth of damage. Destroyed the roof if you can believe it. Should have totaled the damn thing - it was in the shop for 6 weeks. But because of this unfortunate incident, I have firsthand experience. For my insurance carrier (Allstate), accidents with deer are coverd under your comprehensive insurance. Which did have a lower deductable than my collision coverage.
Actually, those signs are closer to San Diego. That spot on the interstate was a major crossing for northward bound illegals, with several deaths of both pedestrians and drivers.
