Driving into work at 6:30 am (still dark) a deer ran from left to right and I hit it...it was pretty big, too. Funny part is we have some deer areas on my commute drive but where this was I've never seen a deer in 21 years. No airbags went off and the hood seems to have taken the brunt of it. No radiator leaks and engine/traction all works great. I do have an exclamation point triangle light on and it's wanting me to clean the sensors and the traction light is also on. Stupid deer. I got it new in July....praying it's not totaled...will post picks later...dropping her off at the collision repair place tonight. I think I figured out how to upload pictures....totally bummed out.... Right Side by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM IMG_9260 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Image5 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Image4 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Image3 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Image2 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM Image1 by Colorado Boo posted Oct 10, 2021 at 12:42 PM
Ha, I do love venison!! I should do like my hunter friend does...he keeps a bunch of tarps/plastic in his car and also a field dressing kit in case he come upon a fresh roadkill...and has had success! The deer population here the past few years is getting out of hand...they've had so many deer being hit in the city (Colorado Springs area) they've considered letting hunters use bows and arrows in certain areas....they really need to. So I'll be going from 65 mpg to 16 mpg (2014 Tundra) for a while...hopefully not forever!!! :-(
oh no! Sorry to hear. Glad it wasnt worse and you are ok. Looks fixable, but looks can be deceiving....so hope it is nothing major.
Oof we recently lost our 2016 Prius to one of those overgrown forest rats. Took 2 months to finally get parts and in the body shop for them to open her up and submit way more repairs than the initial estimate and it was declared totaled. I do not envy anyone else stuck car shopping right now. Pickings are slim and incentives are pretty much trash. Of course yours is brand new and doesn't look to have had as much damage and mine was 5 years old with 120k miles. Aside from looking pretty messed up it drove fine and didn't leak anything in the garage for the weeks it was in the garage waiting for a slot at the repair place. Parking sensors were still active despite hanging loose. only code I saw was the radar toyota emblem had an error. Can't imagine why. We too have been carpooling in our Tundra (got up to 17.3mpg this summer).
Sorry! It'll buff out? Yeah. They grow them pretty big out there. Sorry about the body damage, but it appears that the drivetrain is intact, so you'll be back in battery soon. Good Luck!!
Ouch! That's a bad one! I tried to lift up the hood to see if it actually came down onto the engine but that darn thing is pretty stuck. It's not metal, some sort of very hard composite...not sure if I like that since it suffered way more damage than what I expected from the impact. Maybe time to invest in a big front metal protector like the big trucks have, huh? ;-) Actually, I'm going to put some of those deer whistles on all my vehicles...hide them in the front vents somewhere so they're not sticking out all ugly looking. (Why is black the only color they seem to come in??)
I've had some close calls with deer, luckily so far, I've been able to panic brake and or steer around without loosing control or hitting. They both look totaled to me from my experience with current insurance company, body shop standards. edit: not fun when a deer crossing the road and angling toward the car ! or actually sleeping in the middle of the road like a horse.
Damn, sorry to you both. I know it's really tough to find any cars out there right now. I feel like I'm living in fear of someone or some thing taking my car out in this time of shortages.
That is quite a lot of damage their buddy! Glad you are ok and praying for you to find reliable repair shop that can do the repairs if repairable. Assume you are now using Tundra and using a lot more fuel!
Ouch, its amazing the car wasn't worse considering the deer hit. Sorry to hear for you both. My father was just in an accident with his SUV and even replacing it with a 10 year old car it was very expensive.
You could make money selling these in deer country Yeah unfortunately they weren't able to get ours into a shop to be evaluated so the insurance ordered parts based on pics we submitted for the claim online. Sounds like yours is going to a shop to be properly looked at so you'll at least know soon one way or the other. The 2 month wait and then some hold ups because parts were waiting at the shop too long means I still haven't gotten my payout and the 2 Primes I was eying at nearby dealers have already gone. Somebody could make some money fabricating cattle guards for prii
a big bar on the front might help reduce damage when you hit an animal, but if you hit something hard and heavy (vehicle, building, planet earth etc) all that force gets transferred inside. The squishy meat in the middle becomes the sacrificial crumple zone. Plus how much gas do you want to convert into noise by shoving a heavy fence through the wind? The best defense is to slow down when driving in the dark around deer. You have to assume that they are out there and accept that you can't avoid them while driving at the posted speed limit. My neighborhood is particularly bad for deer in the fall season. I regularly have to pick up pieces of grilles, bumpers and headlights from the frontage of my yard. Extra points when it's a bit of bumper with a deer whistle still attached.
Ouch. The saving grace is that the car absorbed the impact instead of you. In 1990 (!), I was following a buddy of mine on a gravel road, at <25 mph. Apparently too closely. He was driving an S10 pickup, and I was driving a Dodge Daytona. He jammed on the brakes and came to a stop. I jammed on the brakes and came to a stop in his bumper. I literally didn’t feel anything, but my front end was messed up to the tune of $3k in 1990 dollars. He had one red scratch of paint. But the next day he checked himself into the hospital due for a neck injury resulting from the accident. Which I attributed to the impact being transferred to him and not absorbed by the car.
Well finally got an update...the Prius is NOT totaled! Praise the Lord! Just body and windshield damage and a few plastic things inside the engine compartment, like the plastic 12-volt battery holder, need replacing. Radiator was even untouched. Estimate is just over $10,000 and she said Toyota had almost everything available to ship out. She did ask me about the small speaker in the front of the radiator....I told her that was the UFO speaker and I had wrapped it in insulation to muffle it. She said the technicians were wondering what the heck is this thing?? hehehe But it also broke so they have to buy a new one...so funny!
Hey, I just found this thread. Glad you're OK, Boo and can get it fixed. Would have been nasty on a motorcycle.
Amen! I've been commuting this same route for over 10-years and used to drive my old 750cc Honda motorcycle but after a few scares with deer I sold the bike....still miss it but it just wasn't worth the risk. Last year, a young lady in a small car swerved right off the road to miss a deer and ended up going right into a tree...air bags had come out and everything...I love deer but it's getting out of hand lately around here.
Glad your ride can be saved. I only recently moved back to the middle of nowhere a couple of years ago but I don't remember the deer being this bad. Some days I'm stopping multiple times on my way to work to let deer cross the way. Once for a moose. A few times for wild turkeys. We also had a moose pass by our property this summer. Caught him on the driveway camera. We've got 4 or 5 deer that hang around our property that I've had to dodge driving up the driveway a few times. Or chased out of the garden. Or laughed at getting chased by our horses. I would not want to meet up with a deer riding a bike. I've got a 600cc Yamaha FZ6R. A deer would win in a match up no question. It was my daily driver for a few years in Miami FL so I'm decidedly a fair weather rider these days. Not messing around with dawn/dusk commuting in the rain.
