Prius Versus Deer

That sucks. You could console yourself with venison?

 

bummer! too many deer everywhere, and ticks. hope you get back on the road soon!

 

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!!

 

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.

 

Hey, I just found this thread. Glad you're OK, Boo and can get it fixed. Would have been nasty on a motorcycle.

 

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.