There’s a time when I wished our truck driver would’ve hit the duck.
Hit the Duck - that sounds like a dirty euphemism… “So there I was that might, just hitting the duck when all a sudden my roommate walks in…” Anyway…
We had a computer rack full of equipment traveling from city to city on a hired truck. The driver claims he swerved to miss a duck in the road and the rack toppled in the back. $100,000 worth of equipment smashed.
Somewhere in Texas is a duck worth $100,000.
You should’ve yelled “DUCK!!!” then the guy would’ve dove to the floor and drove through the store windows.
To be completely fair, ducks are birds. And most people know that most birds can, y’know, fly. Most flight-capable birds I’ve encountered in my life fly the hell out of the way when approached by pretty much anything. Perhaps the driver saw the duck before he hit it, and naturally assumed that this duck would flap its little wings and move. I can also say that, when I’m driving, I have my eyes open for things that are quite a bit bigger than a duck, like, say, children and other vehicles.
I once ran over some birds — quail — when mommy quail led her babies on a full-speed charge across the road directly into the path of my oncoming car. There was nothing at all I could do, because they burst out of concealment in the brush next to the road and were under my wheels in less than a second. Had I had some warning, I would have braked and let them cross. As it was, I couldn’t do so, and I instead saw flying feathers in my rearview mirror. And I felt rotten about it. Poor mommy quail was running around in frantic circles trying to round up the surviving babies, who were also running around frantically. But I was on a cloverleaf onramp, and I’ll be damned if I was going to stop my car to go check on the poor birdies.
Just in the unlikely event it ever comes up— how should one loudly warn someone of their imminent collision with a duck without causing them to reflexively crouch down?
I suggest the scientific name. Yell “Anas platyrhynchos” loudly.
This, of course, should be appropriately modified for non-Mallard species…
As God is my witness… :smack:
I think the scenario that you encountered is a little different from this one, though. I actually agree with you as to how that particular situation should have been (and sounds like was) handled. If you pull a sudden stop on an interstate or an onramp (or any road on which cars are traveling at a decent speed), you’d run the risk of causing a pileup or something.
This person was more than capable of stopping for these ducks, just like the person in front of him had. (They had stopped, and ended up going around the ducks.) He (?) had just entered the parking lot, and was already going slow to begin with - I actually thought he was going to stop, at first.
LilShieste
“All life is sacred in India, except human life.”
-Mark Twain
I once saw a gold-colored Trans Am coming way too fast up a 4-lane divided residential boulevard. Someone’s golden retriver puppy was ambling across the road, but it got clear of the driver’s lane in time.
Unbelievably, he changed lanes to run over the puppy.
…
Yeah, I didn’t know how to react at first. As he drew even, I missed reading his license plate – because I was bent over in the ditch looking for a rock or brick to heave through his windshield.
Sailboat
In a parking lot, and maybe on a residential street there isn’t much excuse for hitting animals. In fact I can’t think of any excuse.
On the other hand, I don’t swerve much to avoid anything smaller than a deer on the highway. University of Iowa basketball coach Frank (Bucky) O’Connor swerved to avoid running over some chickens and hit a truck, killing him. A friend of mine totalled his car swerving to avoid a dog. I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess around at high speed on the highway.
Your experience may vary.
Actually, the prairie dogs are considered pests because cattle will step in the holes that they dig, which often results in a cow with a broken leg.
I would have run over the duck. It’s ridiculous that I should have to slow down because of some thick creature putting itself in harm’s way. They’re not an endangered species!
I probably run over a pheasant weekly living where I do in the UK. It’s not really possible to avoid it without driving everywhere at 3mph (anyone who is used to pheasants will know what I mean: they make ducks look like they’ve been studying the highway code since hatching). Don’t go out of my way to hit them, of course - that would threaten car stability and be a bit odd.
Pheasants are monumentally stupid, as the annual carnage on the roads around here attests. People quite often stop and pick one up if they’ve just clipped it and it isn’t too badly mangled.
Close enough.
Well, God forbid you make it into the grocery store a full minute later than you had originally planned.
Taking that argument at face value (warning: incoming hyperbole), you’d have no problem with running over some kid who decided to wander in front of your moving vehicle because 1) The creature was “so thick”, it put itself into harm’s way, and 2) Humans aren’t an endangered species.
I’m assuming you’d have a problem with that, though. So, either some form of compassion, or simple fear of being fined/jailed for the action probably plays a role too, no?
I’ve never really had any problems with pheasants here, but I’ll believe you and Struan’s descriptions of them in the UK.
What I don’t understand is this: why is it so hard to make a small effort to avoid hitting one of these animals (pheasant, duck, whatever)? It’s one thing if you turn your car to the left, and the animal decides to still move in front of you. At least you legitimately tried to avoid it. It’s completely different, though, if you don’t bother with trying to avoid it at all.
LilShieste
The non-main roads around here are very twisty and narrow, and often there’s not all that much you can do if a retarded bird hops onto the road. Not that many folk will target them or anything, they’re pretty big birds! I’ve also had a pheasant - with plenty time to get off the road - take flight and fly headlong into my windscreen. I ate that one.
Can I hit the duck if keeps trying to sell me insurance?
Not geese. The best you can get out of a goose around here is that if you steer to one side and keep going slowly it will begrudgingly waddle out of the way while glaring at you.
So you want him to swerve a large van to avoid a duck, possibly rolling his van, causing injuries to himself and possibly endangering others? I have seen way to many human injuries that come from swerving around animals instead of hitting them.
Yes it’s sad, but it’s not worth risk to human life.
If he’s in a parking lot, he is, in theory, going slow enough to perform such a manuver safely. Or even gasp stop.